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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26705110">Shameless: The Mickey Milkovich Story; Season 2</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/FistfulofDollars/pseuds/FistfulofDollars'>FistfulofDollars</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Shameless: The Mickey Milkovich Story [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Shameless (US)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Because it's canon but also Ian and Mickey are idiots, Both characters are underage, Canon-typical physical altercations between Ian/Mickey, Descriptions of Terry being generally frightening/intimidating to Mickey, Drug Dealing, Drug Use, Explicit Homophobia, Hand jobs &amp; Blow jobs @ the rub-n-tug, Homophobic Slurs, M/F Dub-con, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Mickey feels a lot of pressure to be in straight sexual situations, Sex without condoms!, Tense/stressful homophobic scenes, Underage Sex, brief mentions of non-con (Mickey/cellmate), some OCs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:14:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>34,665</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26705110</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/FistfulofDollars/pseuds/FistfulofDollars</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Season two of Shameless through Mickey's eyes. Even though it follows the show pretty close, I would recommend reading the first work in the series before reading this one because I've added in some original scenes and characters to fill in gaps.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Shameless: The Mickey Milkovich Story [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918894</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>84</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Good Life</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Okay here's the start of Season 2. Thank you all again for reading :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Season 2; </span>
  <span>Chapter 1: </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Time passes in Juvie like it’s underwater. Every day made up of thousands of hours, and the clock ticks away each minute so slowly, its batteries might as well be about to go out. The second hand moves so reluctantly, watching it is like an optical illusion. Mickey’s trouble isn’t the passing of time either, but Juvie itself: made up equally of kids born into gangs and drugs that hang together - making them basically untouchable - and the other half who committed singular crimes, usually against their own families, and who are only just getting introduced to what a so-called ‘life of crime’ will look like. Those ones look so much like children, it almost makes Mickey feel bad watching them struggle to get by.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He does his best not to be put into any group, not to hang around any one person too much, and to never get involved with any of the shit that could get extra time tacked onto his sentence. Every week he still calls Ian, and every week he tells him that yes, he’s going to be out on time. He only has three weeks left now, but the closer he gets, the slower the clock moves. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s kitchen work today. Slopping spoonfuls of beans and slices of white bread onto half-washed trays, and seeing the way all this food is prepared only makes it less appetizing when his turn comes to eat it. He does it without complaint though, even when the bread is stale and beans burnt, he does everything in here without complaint. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Three more weeks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Today, he passes off each grungy tray to the inmates that come through the line, while they call him names like ‘dickbreath’ and ‘faggot’ under their breath because they’re just as pissed to be here as he is. It’s safer than taking out their aggression on the guards. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Serving next to him on this five-star buffet line is crying boy from the phones – Mickey still doesn’t know his name – and he falls into the group of kids who perpetually look like they have no idea how they got here. He’s Mickey’s height, but must weigh at least twenty pounds less, and the calluses forming on his hands from work duty look pretty fresh. He’s certainly not the worst inmate here, and Mickey has no problems with him, but today he’s been singing under his breath for almost thirty minutes and Mickey </span>
  <em>
    <span>needs</span>
  </em>
  <span> him to stop. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey.” He says the next time the boy hands him a tray, “Can you shut the fuck up? Some of us are trying </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> to go crazy in here.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crying boy looks at nothing but his hands while he scoops grits onto the tray and passes it along, still humming and singing. It’s Don’t Stop Believin’, and Mickey will never hear the song again without thinking about beans and bread and plastic forks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No. Seriously, you need to stop. Or sing something different. Please.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey hands over a tray, and the inmate in front of him says ‘see you in the shower tonight’ to the boy next to him before taking it and walking away. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Took the midnight train going anyyyywhere</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fucking stop!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Milkovich!” The guard behind them, sitting by the only vent in the kitchen and Mickey doesn’t blame him – this place fucking reeks – folds up the magazine he’s reading and makes like he’s going to get up. “Keep your mouth shut and your hands busy.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Alright. Alright.” Mickey says going back to his metal scoop while the guard sits back down and unrolls his magazine. He doesn’t look back to check, but Mickey thinks he can feel the guard’s eyes on him for another minute before the sensation of being watched goes away. Beside him, the sound of singing continues in that half-whisper only Mickey can hear over all the other noise. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tonight, he’ll call Ian, and all the horrible irritation he’s feeling – crawling up his spine and making his hands want to clench into fists – will disappear right along with the smell of all this awful food. It will be just the two of them for a few minutes, and Ian will tell him about school, and his job, and his crazy siblings and Mickey can just tune everything else out and listen. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Hold on to that feeling…</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For a moment the song finishes and, like the other ten times this has happened, Mickey allows himself to believe it isn’t going to start up again. Then, just like the other times, the boy starts again tonelessly:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Just a small town girl</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh for fuck’s sake please, </span>
  <em>
    <span>please</span>
  </em>
  <span>, stop.” Mickey keeps his voice as low so the guard doesn’t hear, but the boy still doesn’t look at him, just keeps singing to himself. He’s in his own world, one far away from this putrid kitchen and boys waiting in the showers, from the itchy jumpsuits and irritable guards, and he sure as shit isn’t going to come out of it for Mickey. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hurry the fuck up, man.” The inmate on the other side of the counter says, holding his hands out for the tray Mickey hasn’t filled yet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Living in a lonely world</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, alright.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Beans,</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m waiting here. Like, fuck, I’m hungry man.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bread,</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Took the midnight train</span>
  </em>
  <span>,”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Like every other time Mickey’s really lost his temper, in the moment his actions seem reasonable – necessary, even – and it won’t be until later, when he’s calmed down and the anger has passed, that he’ll start to feel regret and maybe even annoyance with himself for doing something stupid. Again. This time is no different; he just can’t take it anymore, and something has to be done. The frustration inside him is more like a physical illness than a feeling. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s got the plastic fork in his hand, all ready to go on the tray, but instead he drives it right into the singing boy’s hand, who yelps and pulls away from Mickey in shock like he’s only now realized he isn’t alone here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s no time to shush him, no time to apologize. Before Mickey can turn around the guard is already there pulling him into a choke-hold and acting like he’s pulled a gun out or something.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Drop it, Milkovich.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey opens his hands immediately, wanting only for the pressure on his neck to be gone, and the plastic fork – two of it’s flimsy tines now broken – drops to the floor. </span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>He gets taken to solitary for the night, his first time, and misses his call with Ian: also a first. Sitting on the metal bench in his temporary cell, somehow so uncomfortable it makes him miss the paltry mattress pad he’s been sleeping on the last three months, he imagines Ian standing by the phone in the kitchen. Waiting for a call, for who knows how long, that isn’t going to come. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe tonight’s the night Ian decides not to take the call, finally realizes he has better things to do on a Tuesday than wait around to have a hurried, hushed conversation with Mickey Milkovich. Maybe he isn’t waiting at all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Things can always get worse, Mickey has found, and it’s best to enjoy any little pleasures life throws your way as they come. Because they can, and probably will, be gone tomorrow. When he’s informed that his stunt with the plastic fork has gotten him an extra thirty days in this place, he realizes he’s been forgetting that important fact lately. Instead of preparing for the worst, he’s been expecting the best. How much time had he spent in the past few weeks daydreaming about getting out and seeing Ian again? More than he spent thinking about anything else, that’s for sure, and that hope has only made everything harder to bear; made him resent every moment in this place that much more.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He had been so close, but it isn’t a mistake he’s going to make again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The next seven weeks he doesn’t think about getting out, doesn’t imagine how nice the fresh air will smell or how good the food will taste, and he doesn’t call Ian again. He can’t stand the thought of telling him about the extra month. So, he calls Mandy and tells her instead. Then, he stops thinking about the outside all together. Instead, he works out, talks to the other inmates when he has too, sleeps as much as he possibly can. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Even when the day of his release really is right around the corner, he doesn’t think about it. Not when the guards poke their heads into the block and call his name, not when he’s gathering up the few possessions he’s accumulated, not as they lead him down a long, windowless hall lined on either side with numbered, reinforced doors, and not even when they let him get dressed into his own clothes and sit him down in a small office, venetian blinds pulled closed over the one window, and tell him to wait while his release is finished processing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not until a woman comes in and introduces herself as his probation officer – shaking his hand with one of hers while offering him a bag of food with the other – and maybe it’s the smell of the burger and fries that does it, but it’s then he finally starts to think: </span>
  <em>
    <span>Yes, I am getting out of here</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Not soon, but now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He eats the burger with the same gusto his father had eaten the Pringles when he’d gotten out, but is too hungry and excited to make the comparison. The parole woman tells him about the drug testing, the job he needs to get (she lets him know that if he makes her find him one, it will be less pleasant than anything, </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he could manage to scare up himself), and she tells him if he makes any more trouble they’ll have him right back in here. Probably for longer next time, too. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her (inspirational?) speech goes on for at least fifteen minutes longer than Mickey thinks he can stand. He had been right to not think about leaving anymore. Now that he has, the desire to get the fuck out of this depressing building is like a physical force trying to make his feet move. She does eventually finish, though, and dismisses him like a teacher would from their office at school. He takes the trash from his burger outside with him unwilling to spend even a moment looking for a trashcan.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As soon as the metal gate closes behind him, getting ready to open again for a fresh crop of kids even as he leaves, the bad feelings of the last few months start to disappear. Everything inside him has been replaced with the simple joy of freedom. He’s convinced himself Ian will have moved on when he stopped calling - much the way he had convinced himself he could move on just before taking a bullet for him - but there he is, standing next to Mandy like he belongs here. He says some shit about it being a bad neighborhood, but Mickey doesn’t want to hear it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s feeling his good mood, absent since the day he got shot, returning all at once like the last six months never happened. Fuck the guards, fuck that place, fuck the police, fuck everything. Mickey throws the trash onto the steps for one of those assholes to pick up, and follows Mandy and Ian back to real life. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The air in the city is hot in a way only a grid of concrete and overcrowded bodies can produce and, despite its air conditioning – working as hard as it can, Mickey’s sure – riding the L is just as bad as walking the streets below. Mickey can feel his hair and dirty tank-top sticking to his skin, and Mandy looks just as damp as he feels, reaching up every few seconds to wipe her makeup under her eyes so the liner won’t run, but Ian alone looks unaffected. He’s sitting on the other side of Mandy, legs spread slightly, one arm wrapped loosely around her shoulders and the other leaning against the window, and every so often their eyes meet. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mandy pulls out an ipod touch (“Tracy Wilkens” she says when she notices him staring, but doesn’t elaborate), and plays Kanye’s We Don’t Care, turning it up until it’s too loud to be polite. It doesn’t matter; the three of them sing along with the chorus and ignore the way the other passengers shoot angry looks at all the noise they’re making. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Free from Juvie, the whole summer stretching out in front of him, and Ian looking as good and happy as he feels, Mickey couldn’t care less what these other fuckers think. He’s back on top and he doesn’t plan to take a single second for granted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Because tomorrow … well, you just never know.</span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>They go home, and Ian and Mandy go to her room to get high, but Mickey goes to his own room instead. Weed is a big no-no according to his probation officer, and – even after just this small taste – there’s no way he’s jeopardizing his freedom for Mandy’s shitty weed. He also just wants to be left alone in his room for a little while; wants to smell his own clothes even though there’s a voice in his head telling him how fucking weird he is when he does it; wants to just look at everything, exactly how he left it, for a little while until his release starts feeling more permanent. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eventually, Mandy and Ian appear in his doorway, stupid smiles on their faces, and Ian is looking at Mickey intensely like he hasn’t gotten used to having him back either. They all agree to watch a movie on the couch before Terry gets back from wherever he is. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mandy says she’ll make popcorn, and Ian says he’ll pick a movie, but when she walks around the corner of the hallway, he stays where he is in the doorway watching Mickey. Ian looks good, always looks good, but when Mickey first saw him today he had been disappointed by his short hair. Except, now that he’s looking again, it’s clear it’s only made Ian that much more dynamic. Outside, under the hot sun, his hair looked more orange than red – the exact same shade as his bush had in the morning light of Mickey’s room – but now, under the soft glow of the hallway light, it’s burgundy again. Dark and beautiful, Mickey wants to touch it. He wants to know what it feels like, soft and short, under his hands. That, the way Ian’s eyes are looking him up and down, and just having him here and seeing him again, is all making Mickey feel the summer heat in the best sort of way.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Looking for something, faggot?” He asks when he thinks they’ve been staring at each other too long. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“At.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Looking </span>
  <em>
    <span>at </span>
  </em>
  <span>something.” Ian says. While he talks, he brings his hands up to rest against the door-frame in a casual way, like he’s stretching, but it brings his shirt up too and gives Mickey a great view of his hip bones. Under the same soft light making Ian’s hair dark again, shadows spread out across the lowest part of Ian’s hips visible just above the tops of his low-riding jeans: an invitation to Mickey’s hands. He can picture it, sinking to his knees in front of Ian, unbuttoning the first, then second, buttons, tugging the pants all the way down to Ian’s ankles so he can press his lips gently against the boy's knees, his thighs, upper thighs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey’s eyes get back to Ian’s face just in time for them both to let out deep exhales. In the kitchen, Mandy makes a noise, and Ian jerks a little like he forgot they weren’t alone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Move.” Mickey says walking towards his dresser even though it brings him closer to the doorway where Ian is stretched out lazily like some red-headed James Dean. “We gonna watch a movie or what?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s the rush?” Ian asks but he takes his hands off the door-frame and they both hear the microwave beeping in the kitchen, signalling the end of their brief alone time. Instead of leaving though, Ian steps towards him and puts his hand on Mickey’s neck like he’s going in for a kiss, but instead, he leans in and presses his nose against Mickey’s neck, just under his ear, and inhales. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“God, I missed you so much.” Ian whispers against him, gives his hair a gentle tug, and pulls away. He disappears down the hallway too, and Mickey takes a few deep breaths after he leaves. It’s nothing. Just the shock of finally being home again, the peace and quiet of his own room after months of endless chatter and no privacy. That’s all, Mickey thinks as he wipes his eyes and goes out to join them on the couch. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s just the three of them – no coming home party for Mickey and why would there be? He and Mandy are the ones who plan them nowadays – but this is better than any party Mickey has ever been to anyways. They watch the new Mission Impossible on bootleg and eat buttery popcorn right out of the bag, and the whole time Ian’s leg is pressed right up against his in a way that sometimes distracts him from the action on the screen. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s enough. More than enough, and more than he probably deserves. </span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>When the movie ends - the popcorn bag long since emptied and tossed aside, the sky outside turned dark - Mandy stretches and yawns while the credits roll, and Ian stands up and stretches too giving Mickey a great view up his backside.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve got to get going.” Ian says to Mandy, but when he turns his back on her he glances between Mickey and the door. As if they need a signal; as if Mickey isn’t going to follow him through the dark streets either way. “I’ve got chemistry study group in the morning.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay. Good luck with that.” She says and gives him a light tap on his stomach that makes him smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow though right?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, ma’am.” He gives a playful salute and heads towards the door, calling out “Night, Mickey!” as he leaves. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey burps in response, waits as long as he can force himself too - about a minute -  then tells Mandy, who’s flipping through channels with a bored expression on her face, he’s going out for smokes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Whatever.” She responds, and if everyone gave as few fucks as Mandy did, living a double life would be easy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He catches up with Ian close to the house, just under the L, and they smile at each other as the train rushes by overhead. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Chemistry study group, huh?” Mickey asks when the roar of the train finally fades.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Gotta get my grades up.” Ian says with a shrug, “I would have told you about it if you hadn’t stopped calling me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What am I, your mom? I don’t have to call you to check in, Gallagher.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My mom never calls.” Ian says, but he pushes Mickey playfully on the shoulder. “Why did you stop calling? What happened with the extra time? You promised you’d be good.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey almost tells him about being inside – the constant noise, always being on guard while the other inmates tested his physical and emotional defenses, the complete lack of privacy every second of every day – and about the way that boy had been singing under his breath. How it had all just made him snap, a real moment of temporary insanity, but even just thinking about it makes his throat feel tight. So, he shrugs instead and says:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I tried. Can’t have everyone thinking I’m some kind of pussy though.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian shakes his head like that’s exactly what he expected Mickey to say, and suggests they get some beer at the Kash-and-Grab. It snaps Mickey out of his self-pity.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” He says making a fist with his hand and cracking his knuckles unconsciously, “Got some unfinished business there anyways.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If you’re talking about Kash, he’s gone. Left like a week ago with some guy.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey frowns at first, but then it changes to a smile. It’s a little annoying he won’t get his revenge, but he can’t help the good feeling that comes along with knowing that fucker decided to get himself gone just before Mickey got out. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Good</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he thinks, but Ian looks less sure. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What? You miss him too?” Mickey asks, feeling defensive and recalling the way Ian had smelled his collar earlier. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck no.” Ian says, and the look of disgust on his face does a lot to mollify Mickey. “Not after what he did. I just feel bad for Linda and the kids. She still can’t get out of bed, and she’s got no one else to watch the store when I’m not there. So, it’s closed a lot now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey understands, or at least he tries to, but just can’t make himself give a damn about Linda, her kids, or her vanishing, pedophile husband the way Ian does. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sure enough, when they get to the Kash-and-Grab the familiar storefront is dark and the closed sign is facing out. They go around back, and Ian uses his key to let himself in, leaving Mickey in the alley while he grabs supplies. He almost tells Ian to get condoms, but changes his mind. If he wants to bang too, he’ll get what they need, and if he doesn’t there’s no reason for Mickey to put himself out there like that. No reason to make himself look like some needy girl, even if that’s exactly how he feels watching Ian bend over to pull the rolling door up. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Ian gets back out, he’s holding a six pack of canned beer, cigarettes, and, sure enough, a box of condoms – Magnums, because what the universe kept from Ian in terms of money, it had given back to him in spades physically – and more of that overpriced lube. The shopping list of two horny teens with no one to give them shit if they stay out all night, and he dumps it all into Mickey’s ratty backpack while he wonders out-loud where they should go.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know a place.” Mickey says, and he does. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It came to him on one of those endless nights when sleep had been impossible, and ever since he first imagined Ian fucking him in the dugout, where he would jealously watch the other kids from across the street after he himself had been booted off the team, he had revisited the thought often. Jerking off on his bunk thinking about it while his cellmate snored above him. Now they can actually do it, and Mickey isn’t going to let a single second of his new life go to waste. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian does most of the talking as they walk and drink, and it’s perfect. Fiona, Lip, Debbie, Carl, Liam - Mickey pretty much has all the names memorized now, even if he sometimes gets the birth-orders mixed up. Of course, there’s also Frank, but Ian only mentions him in passing and it sounds like he’s not living at home now. Mickey doesn’t really care about the Gallagher’s current problems, but he likes to listen to that more than he likes to hear Ian talking about school. It makes him feel like his own pending drop-out is some kind of loss instead of just the natural progression of things.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The night air is still hot; all around them houses have their windows open. The sound of TV’s and the smell of cooking dinners waft out of them like tiny glimpses into other worlds. He and Ian walk and talk under the streetlights, occasionally bumping shoulders and pulling back again. Mickey’s never had a close friend, never had conversation and laughter come so easily with anyone, and to him it elevates Ian: makes him seem like some kind of other-worldly being. A gift from the heavens maybe – one of a kind – and, for tonight at least, he’s all Mickey’s. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They make it to the ball field – empty, thankfully, though on such a clear, warm night Mickey was worried they’d run into other kids with the same idea – and Ian’s still talking about school - summer school - but Mickey’s got other things on his mind. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now that they’re finally here, alone, at least some of the heat he’s feeling has nothing to do with the weather. Ian looks so much more attractive in person than he has in Mickey’s imagination all these months.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So, are we gonna do this thing, or what?” He asks, cutting off Ian’s endless stream of thoughts. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian nods, looking at Mickey like he can see right through him, like he knows exactly what he wants and is perfectly happy to give it to him. No cost upfront, all payments will be taken directly from his sanity at a later date. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey turns around, already pulling at his pants. He can smell the fresh sod and metal chain-link fence while his feet dig into the loose dirt covering the ground of the dugout. His hands spread out on the concrete barrier, hip height, that separates the space between them and the field while he listens to Ian unzip the backpack. He hasn’t realized it yet, but the lack of decision making, how impossible it is to come up with solutions or take care of anything in this position, is a big draw to him for what they do together. Let Ian handle it; what he feels for him is something very like trust. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s only pulled his pants down just enough, but then Ian’s hands are there pulling them down to his ankles but leaving his boxers where they are. He can feel Gallagher behind him, getting down on his knees even though it will leave dirt stains on his jeans. He’s running his hands up Mickey’s legs, and now it’s obvious what he’s looking for: the bullet scars. There’s two of them – one where it went in and one where it came out – but they’ve faded away to almost nothing now. Ian still finds them and runs his fingers along them gently even though they’ve long since stopped hurting. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry.” Ian says, still kneeling, like he expects Mickey to turn around and knight him, using his half-chub as the sword. It would be one thing if he just wanted to see them, Mickey’s found himself looking at the fading scars from time to time, but he better not expect Mickey to hold his hand and forgive him or some shit. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Get the fuck up.” He says, looking around, but the field’s still as empty as before. He can’t see Ian roll his eyes, but he hears him sigh and can feel displeasure in the way Ian pushes him against the concrete barrier as he stands up. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t have to be such a dick all the time, you know?” Ian says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If you want to shack up with a fag, kiss his legs and shit, the fuck are you doing with me?” He doesn’t realize until he asks, but Mickey actually would like an answer to that. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t get one though. All Ian says is, “fair enough.” Then he pushes Mickey again, a little less gently this time, and his hands come around dipping into Mickey’s boxers and pulling his dick out while grinding into Mickey’s ass from behind. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’re both so hard already. Six months since they’ve done this, and it might as well have been sixty. Mickey can feel an inner warmth traveling down from his cock in Ian’s hand, down his legs, and all the way to his toes. He’s been dreaming about this, and now Ian’s really here, behind him, breathing right into his ear, and there’s nothing else to think about. He wants Ian’s dick inside him right now, the same way he wants a cigarette after a few hours or a drink after a long day, and nothing else will do until he’s had it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian’s not feeling the same, desperate need to hurry though. He’s got the lube out of the backpack now and Mickey listens irritably as he peels the plastic seal off it slowly like they’ve got all the time in the world. It makes him feel like he’s the only one that’s about to implode. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dammit Gallagher.” He says after too much time has passed and they still haven’t started. “Just do it already. You don’t have to go easy on me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He moves to turn around, but Ian puts a firm hand on his neck and pushes him forward again hard enough to make his legs smart where they press against the top of the concrete. Mickey reaches forward and grabs onto the chain link fence to keep Ian from pushing him into an embarrassing position, and the whole fence rattles in the still, summer air. Fire-crotch has definitely put on muscle since the last time Mickey saw him, and luckily he has too or Ian might have caught up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t fucking tell me what to do, Mick. And I’m not going to go easy on you. After all this time? Fuck no.”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian’s hand comes around to the front of Mickey’s throat, big enough to wrap all the way around, and tilts his chin back like at any moment Ian could decide Mickey no longer gets to breath and that would be that. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t need anyone else telling me what to do.” He says, and Mickey can’t think of an argument to that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian’s hand disappears from his neck, traveling down to his hips instead, and Mickey takes a deep breath and lets it out. He’s trying to think of something else to say, but then Ian’s right there pushing inside him. No fingers this time, just his hard cock, and it’s slow but also nothing like what they’ve done before, but now that he’s started Mickey doesn’t want him to stop. He doesn’t want to ask again, and he definitely doesn’t want Ian to pause and ask anything of him. So, he stays still and quiet while Ian hesitates for a moment and then pushes in even further. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck.” Mickey gasps out because he’s never thought about how gentle Ian has been with him up until now, and also because the stinging pain is just one of the amazing things all of this is making him feel. His own cock is throbbing, and his heart is pounding, and he’s remembering that first time when Ian had thrown him onto the couch. The rush from that had also been something different; something more like foreplay than an actual fight. Then Ian had fucked him into his own mattress, and completely torn apart Mickey’s idea of sex so it could be remade in his image. He had ached then too, a sharp pain in his ribs and stomach where Ian’s punches had connected, and this felt so much like that. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tonight, Ian circles his arm around Mickey’s chest and pulls him up so their bodies are touching practically everywhere. Thighs, hips, Ian’s chest against Mickey’s back and his breath hot on the nape of Mickey’s neck. The further Ian presses in, the wider Mickey has to spread his legs, until they both have to pause so he can kick his boxers and jeans the rest of the way off. As soon as he does, Ian grabs his leg just under the knee and pulls it up until Mickey’s foot is off the ground. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now Ian is basically holding them both up, fucking him faster every second. It’s making Mickey gasp and moan in the otherwise silent ballfield and fist his own cock in a semblance of the pace Ian is setting. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s been barely a few minutes, but there’s no pain now. Only a burning desire for this, what they’re doing, for Ian to be inside him because there’s nothing else that could ever make Mickey feel this good. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jesus Mick…feels like…can’t” Ian pulls his leg up even higher, mindless of whether or not Mickey can actually stretch like that, mindless of the fact that, from this angle, his cock is going into Mickey </span>
  <em>
    <span>deep</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Not just stretching him, but pushing against his insides like what they’re doing might actually be permanent. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t.” Mickey forces himself to say, even though his voice comes out octaves higher than normal, but he can tell Ian’s close. “Don’t pull out. I wanna come on your dick.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh fuck.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian’s whole body tenses, and without warning he bites down hard on Mickey’s shoulder, right over the strap of his tank top, and lets out a strangled groan. He stops thrusting, holds Mickey’s hips still and stays all the way in while Mickey strokes himself furiously trying to fully appreciate the feeling of having Ian inside him after months of dreaming about it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He does come on Ian’s dick, holding back all the sounds he wants to make except a few soft whimpers that slip out, and when he’s done, he leans back against Ian’s body until the other boy sets his leg down and pulls out. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey watches his own jizz slide down the concrete barrier and make a path through the dirt and dust while Ian throws the used condom onto the bench for some kid to find and laugh about with their friends. They both pull their pants back on. Mickey’s feeling it again, that satisfaction – those good vibes – and as the sprinklers tick on over the grassy outfield, he yells: </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve always wanted to do that here!”</span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian talks shit about school and finding him a job, until Mickey, already missing the feeling of being fucked, convinces him to go another round. When Ian comes first again, he gets back down on his knees and blows Mickey in the same place he had once been kicked off his PeeWee baseball team and banished from forever - or it had at least felt like forever to a young Mickey. It hadn’t been forever, though. He’s back here now, touching Ian’s hair just like he wanted to earlier while the boy does obscene things with his tongue that make Mickey moan.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The stars are probably out now, but few of them can cut through the city lights, and when the two boys stumble out of the dugout finishing off the last two beers, neither of them look up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’ve spent the whole night together, and it’s almost early morning. Just the faintest hint of blue is starting to appear over the buildings to the east, but Mickey’s not ready to let the night go just yet. What he wants to do is take Ian home to his bed where the two of them can crowd under the covers and spend what’s left of the night safe and together. If he was Mandy, he could. If he was Mandy, he could take Ian home and they could fuck on the kitchen table risking no more than an earful from Terry about not getting pregnant. If he was Mandy, he could marry Ian right now and never think about anyone else ever again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time they pass the closed Kash-and-Grab again, the sky’s lightened even more giving the street-parked cars dark blue outlines against the pavement. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So you’ll think about it then?” Ian asks after several more minutes of comfortable silence. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Think about what?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The job. You know, with me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why the fuck would you want to work with me anyways?” He’s not really thinking about the full range of possibilities until he catches the other boy’s grin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Unless you’d rather spend all summer fucking in places like that dugout.” Ian knocks their shoulders together purposefully.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know. Get passed all the used condoms laying around and it’s not-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, yo! Mick!” The call comes from across the street and cuts Mickey off mid-thought.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’ve taken the long way around, going south an extra block without discussing it because neither of them are ready yet to crawl into bed alone. The houses here look just like the ones on their own street and, overhead, the L still screeches predictably by. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Across the street, between two boarded up houses are three men – four, if you count the one passed out on the concrete porch of the house to the right (drunk, not dead. Probably) – and they’re looking over at him and Ian. He doesn’t recognize any of them at first glance. One of the standing men has a full-face skull mask, popular with meth heads who can no longer control their vicious need to pick at scabs, and that, along with the fact they’re all white and heavily tattooed doesn’t really narrow it down. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mickey Milkovich, I know that’s you!” The same voice calls out and suddenly Mickey can place it. It’s Nick – of the sell-on-credit, black-and-white documentaries Nicks – and the realization doesn’t make him feel any better. “I heard you were in Juvie.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you know that guy?” Ian asks in a whisper even though they’re far enough away to speak normally and not be overheard. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah. I guess.” He answers Ian. Then, calls out: “I just got out. That you Nick?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah!” The recognition from him causes a stir of ‘yeah’s’, shoulder jostles and nodding from the three guys who pull out of the shadow of the house and start walking towards him and Ian. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The one on the porch doesn’t stir. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He holds his hand out for Nick when he gets close and they embrace for a moment in a casual way Mickey hopes means this will be nothing but a quick conversation. He wants to tell Ian to go home, has no idea how the younger boy will come across here, but decides it’s not worth drawing the attention to him. Nick is carrying, Mickey can see the butt of a glock sticking out the front of his jeans – tempting that bitch fate, as Terry would say – and he isn’t making any effort to conceal it. It’s the one in the mask that worries Mickey the most though. Twitchy and probably jonesing – it doesn’t matter how long ago his last hit was, if he can stand up, he’s already thinking about the next one – and he comes up the curb too close to Ian forcing him to push against Mickey to avoid a collision. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey feels Ian’s shoulder touch his and jerks back. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’re fine. Just two guys heading home for the night. After all, Nick has been hanging out here for god-knows how long with a group of men and no one’s accusing them of anything. Why should he and Ian be any different?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How was Juvie, little Mickey? Pop your cherry, or what.” Nick asks, making an obscene gesture with his thumb and forefinger and ‘pop’ sound with his mouth, and they all laugh, except Ian. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is nothing, small talk of the previously incarcerated, and Mickey heard most of it before he ever even went to Juvie, but there’s no disguising Ian’s relative innocence. One step up from rock-bottom, the Gallaghers, and it isn’t doing them any favors in this neighborhood. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine.” Mickey says noncommittally and Nick steps a little closer, dashing his hopes of this just being a quick hello. “Bitch of a parole officer will want me up in a few hours looking for work.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This earns him a sympathetic sounding grunt from the man standing next to Nick, but even without looking Mickey can feel the masked tweaker, still too close to Ian, start to circle around behind them. Probably just looking to rest against the peeling white picket fence of the house at their backs, but it sets his nerves even more on edge. Worse, Nick is now openly staring at Ian, and Mickey feels like it would be more awkward now not to introduce him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is Ian Gallagher. Lives down the block from me. Dating my sister, Mandy.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Behind them, tweaker lets out a wolf-whistle and to Nick’s right, the other unmasked man holds his fist up to his mouth and makes a gagging sound like he’s choking on a dick. Neither Ian nor Mickey say anything to defend Mandy’s honor.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What about you, Ian?” Nick asks after the laughter at Mandy’s expense cuts off abruptly. “Been in yet?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No. ROTC training. I’m trying to get into Westpoint.” Ian gestures to a patch on Nick’s jacket Mickey hadn’t noticed before. It looks like some kind of military emblem. “Won’t let me in if I’ve got priors.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a good try, Mickey thinks, but the audience is wrong. These guys almost certainly have enough convictions that even the most desperate recruiting office would laugh them out. Their military ‘aspirations’ have more to do with state sanctioned mass-murder than actually putting in the time and effort. The mood of the group shifts a little, and Nick holds his hands up and says “well, well” as though Ian’s been bragging. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey, feeling vaguely uncomfortable before, now very much wants to leave. The three guys have managed to surround them. He saw it happen, but there was nothing to do about it, and now they’re just going to have to wait until Nick is done with them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, it was nice to see you.” Mickey tries, but Nick talks over as though he hadn’t said anything.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’re you guys doing out here?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Whatever casual feel they had for each other a few minutes ago has disappeared, and now he and Ian are just interlopers on the wrong block at the wrong time. Mickey can feel the masked man still behind them, but tweaker or not, this is still just Nick: grows his own weed small-time and fingers triggers on guns he doesn’t have the balls to use, Nick. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The question has been hanging in the air too long, but Mickey still hasn’t come up with a good answer when next to him, Ian says, “Went down to the ballfield to piss on first base.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This earns a laugh from the group, the most genuine one yet, but once again Nick’s laughter cuts off without warning. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So I guess you play catcher.” Nick says, no laughter in his voice now. He’s pointing at Ian, but not at his chest. No, his finger is angled downwards and Mickey doesn’t have to follow his gaze, or feel the sick drop of his own stomach, to know Nick’s pointing at Ian’s knees. He fights the urge to look, already understands what the patches of dirt must look like on the denim even in the early morning light, and Ian is a lot smarter than he sometimes pretends to be because he doesn’t reach down to brush the dirt off even though his fingers must be itching to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s plenty of reasons Ian’s knees might be dirty. Mickey can’t think of any besides the obvious right now, but that’s not really the point. There’s no right answer to that accusation, nothing either of them can say that won’t just make them look more guilty. So, Mickey stays quiet, and he prays silently Ian will too. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Even though he’s nervous – he has no idea when Nick noticed the jeans or how long he’s been stringing this conversation out waiting to say something – Mickey knows there’s still a good chance they walk away from this without trouble. It takes two to tango (though Mickey thinks ‘tangle’ in his mind because no one’s ever corrected him before), and if Nick is going to attack them without provocation, he probably already would have. They aren’t badly outnumbered, but there’s also the glock. If Nick has the balls to use it, that is. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally, when the silence has stretched out long enough and no one has followed the first comment up with any more accusations, Mickey asks in his most casual, just-shooting-the-shit voice:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Got a light?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He pulls out the already half-empty Marlboro pack from his back pocket trying not to think of the way Nick is still staring at Ian. He holds it out in an offering, and the other unmasked man takes him up on it, pulling out a cigarette and handing over his lighter in return. Mickey takes it and lights up even though he has one of his own in his back pocket.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Silence was the right move; neither of the two guys seem to give a shit about Nick or his half-hearted accusations. The tension, if there was any, is gone and now the dominant feeling coming off the group is boredom. Mickey stays still as he smokes, knows how fast the mood can turn if he looks like he’s trying to get away or hide something. Nick continues looking at Ian like he’s trying to get him to flinch. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>First to break the stillness is the tweaker behind them, and Mickey almost ruins the calm by flinching himself when he hears the movement. Nick’s eyes flash to him, harmless but full of manic excitement as though he’s also tripping, but in the end Mickey covers the startled movement by tapping the butt of his cigarette and ashing it onto the sidewalk. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Imma hit again.” Says a voice through the fabric of the mask, and the man walks away scratching at the inside his elbow. Back towards the house where someone else, perhaps a friend of his, still lays passed out on the porch. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After a moment, the other guy follows. He throws an inscrutable look back at Mickey, neither friendly nor hostile, then calls out to Nick: “You comin’?” But doesn’t wait to see if he follows. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Without his friends, small-time, wanna-be-Nazi doesn’t look tough at all, but as he follows the others across the street, he touches the butt of his gun and says, “Watch out for yourself, Little Mickey.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then the three of them disappear behind the plywood door of the house. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Holy shit. I thought that guy was going to kill us.” Ian says as soon as the men are out of sight. He sounds breathless even though neither of them have moved since they were first stopped. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They were just fucking around.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Seriously, who is that guy?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Just some shithead I buy weed from. Don’t!” He says sharply when Ian starts to brush the dirt off his knees. He looks back towards the house, but there’s no movement inside he can see. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”</span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s fully light by the time he drops Ian off at the Gallagher’s, and the morning commute of people in the neighborhood who actually have jobs is starting to pick up. He doesn’t stop to make sure Ian gets inside, but he hears the door open and close as he walks away. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No one’s awake yet when he gets back home and that’s just fine by him. Just like yesterday, the smell of his room is a welcome novelty still and his mattress feels like heaven – broken springs or not.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He thinks he’ll fall right asleep given how tired he feels, but for minutes after he lays down, he continues to go over what happened in his mind. It’s more confirmation of what he already knows: one slip, a little dirt on a pair of jeans, is all it would take. He can picture Mandy, in the black mourning dress he last saw at their mother’s funeral, crying, for Ian if not for him. Her school friends would stand behind her and whisper: </span>
  <em>
    <span>sleeping with her brother I heard; got what they deserve</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>These thoughts go through his mind, keeping him restless and tossing, until he remembers the joints he stashed away. Probably Ian took them like he had told him too, and even if he hadn’t, Mickey shouldn’t be smoking anyways while on probation. He’s starting to feel a little desperate though, so he rolls off the bed and pulls the mattress up. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the square hole, positioned just above one of the wood slats so you’d have to be looking for it to find it, is the envelope he stuck there in what now feels like another lifetime. He runs his hands along the edges of the small cubby but it’s clear the ziplock with the joints is gone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He lets the mattress fall back down and sits on the floor holding the envelope, trying to imagine why Ian would take the weed and leave the money. Except, the envelope feels a lot thicker than it had when he put it away, and when he turns it over he can see someone’s written on the back. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t have to decipher the tight scrawl to understand what it says. Names, odds, dates and dollar signs with pluses and minuses in front of them. It’s a list of bets that starts a little more than a month after he went inside, and goes all the way to a few weeks ago. Ian has been gambling the money, at least once a week, and keeping track of the wins and losses. When Mickey opens the envelope, he counts out almost eight hundred dollars in tens and twenties. There’s no explanation, let alone one for why he would return the money after almost quadrupling it, but finding it has made Mickey feel a lot better than he had just minutes ago. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He counts the money one more time, puts it back in the envelope, and tucks it away, not back where he found it, but into his nightstand. Now that he’s home, it’ll be safe there. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This time when he gets back into bed, he falls asleep easily.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>*-*-*</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Thanks, Dad</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Please read the updated tags! This chapter happens between Ian and Mickey's night at the ballpark and his first day working at the Kash-and-Grab. Mickey adjusts to his new life without school, working for the family, while Terry grows suspicious of his youngest son and decides to set him straight.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I've updated the tags so please check those out again before you read this chapter! I don't think it's anything outside the realm of what's already canon in the show, but still. And I know Svetlana doesn't come into the show until later, but I also think that when Mickey sees her for the first time, he has a pretty immediate understanding of what's going on and I figured I'd give that a little backstory. <br/>Once again, thank you for reading! Hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Season 2; Chapter 2: Thanks, Dad</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Everything in the house is exactly how he left it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he wakes up, after sleeping through most of the day, he hears the sound of wrestling on the living room TV even though his door is shut. He can tell it’s wrestling because of the cheesy music, played every few minutes before the commercials and after them, and the sounds his father and brothers are making as they watch. Not ‘run faster!’ or ‘take the shot!’, but ‘get him!’ and ‘fuck him up!’ Then the chorus of sympathetic groans when whoever they’re yelling about does get himself got. Mickey keeps his eyes closed for as long as he can, listening to the sounds of the house without having to be a part of them, but gets up eventually for lack of anything better to do. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He loves his family, he really does, and how can he not? The sounds he’s hearing now are the same sounds he heard as a child. Back when his mother had been alive and there had been no question of him belonging to the Milkovich’s. Back when he would have loved to go out and watch TV like that, hollering with the rest of them and maybe sitting on the floor between his father’s legs and taking sips of his beer when they were offered. He knows he can still do that now, with his own spot on the couch and his own beer because he’s no longer a child, but he doesn’t feel a natural desire to anymore. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If he goes out there now, he’ll have to pretend. Pretend to give a shit who wins the match, pretend he spent his night out with some chick, pretend to laugh at the same stupid jokes his father always tells, and pretend every second he didn’t wish he was somewhere else. Everything in this house is exactly the same as it’s always been; it’s Mickey who no longer belongs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He still has to eat though. So he heads to the kitchen, walking past his brothers and, of course, Terry. Shirtless, his hairy gut sticking out, he takes up half the couch on his own and he watches Mickey through watery eyes as he walks by. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You out now?” He asks, and it’s difficult to tell if he’s surprised to see Mickey or just so drunk he doesn’t quite recognize his own son, but the stare is scrutinizing and cold. It makes Mickey wish he had stayed in his room a little longer. He stops walking though, looking off towards the TV and watching Terry in his peripheral without realizing he’s doing it, and nods. In the kitchen, the home phone begins to ring. Terry doesn’t follow up the question and snaps, ‘You gonna get that?’ as the phone continues to ring so he goes to answer it while Tony also watches him from the couch. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah?” He says into the receiver once he picks it up, not sure if he’s annoyed or grateful for the interruption. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hi. I’m trying to reach Mikhailo Milkovich.” He places the voice as his probation officer. The one who brought him the burger, and then watched as he scarfed it down. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, it’s me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mr. Milkovich, I’ve been trying to reach you all day.” The clock on the stove is telling him it’s 5:36pm, and he has no idea if it’s right or not, but if it is he must have slept at least twelve hours. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I, uh… slept all day.” He says, even though it feels weird to tell this stranger anything. “I didn’t mean to; I just did.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The line is silent for a moment, but when she speaks again her voice is less accusatory. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, that’ll happen. I hope you haven’t forgotten what we talked about though. Have you found a job yet?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve got some leads. Know a guy who says there might be something at the shop he works at.” </span>
  <em>
    <span>That way we can fuck in the stockroom just like we used to, and no one will ask any questions about anyone’s knees</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m happy to hear that. I’ll want a pay stub by our check-in in two weeks, and I’ll be around. So, no booze and no weed.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah.” Mickey says looking at the kitchen table where a square of saran wrap has been laid out. On top of it is a razor blade, and nothing but a very fine dusting of white powder left. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is there a better number I can reach you at?” She asks, and Mickey wonders who picked up the other times she ‘tried to reach him’ and what was said. “Do you have a cellphone?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He snorts.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sure. I’ll give you the number of my car phone. It’s in the Bently.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For a moment, she doesn’t respond and he thinks: Stupid, </span>
  <em>
    <span>stupid</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Why can’t he go five minutes without pissing people off? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s an okay guy. Really. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When her voice comes back it’s still at least mostly free of annoyance. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“See if you can get yourself a temporary one so we can stay in touch. Until then, answer the phone when I call, and get a job. I’ll see you next week.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t realize he’s expecting a dial tone until the line doesn’t go dead. What do most people do when they’re done talking? He and Ian usually hang up whenever the distractions on either end become too much, but maybe she’s expecting a goodbye.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay, I will. Bye.” He says, feeling awkward. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Goodbye, Mr. Milkovich.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mickey.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mr. Milkovich.” She disagrees and then the line does go dead. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s thinking about Ian’s job offer, whether or not it’s legit, about how the fuck he’s supposed to stay clean, and, oddly, about that suit the public defender had brought him – the itchy one that covered his tattoos. So when Terry’s voice comes from right behind him, it catches him completely off guard. He jerks back, narrowly avoiding a good smack to his funny bone on the back-door frame. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?” He asks, so startled he’s missed what Terry said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I said I got work for you tonight.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the opposite of what he wants to hear, the echoes of his cell block still waiting to ring in his ears if he listens hard enough, but there’s no choice. Tomorrow he’ll get a job with pay-stubs for his probation, but tonight he’ll do whatever Terry has lined up. Because there are worse things than Juvie for boys like Mickey who don’t say ‘how high?’ when their fathers say ‘jump’. He’s still holding the phone and the dial tone is buzzing in his hand so he hangs it up. </span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>Weed and meth - basically anything grown or cooked up in a lab -  can all be bought cheap locally, but the best party favors, the kind you swallow at the beginning of the night and roll on for a good eight hours - like everyone’s current favorite, Molly - those you get from Canada. Those maple-tree fuckers might not know how to start wars, but they can press and roll pills like the best of them. Better yet, they come down the lake in boats barely bigger than dinghys and can be picked up in Evesten, less than an hour’s drive from The Yards.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Terry has just such a shipment coming in tonight. Instead of doing anything to prepare for it, he’s gotten well over the legal-limit drunk with his (</span>
  <em>
    <span>favorite</span>
  </em>
  <span>) sons and, just his luck, the youngest one has shown up right on time to do the work for him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey doesn’t mind; he has a soft spot for lake runs. Unlike picking up guns - always behind barbed wire fencing, where guys work on their motorcycles and spit chew into old tin cans - or delivering hot cars to garages where assholes with sweat running down their faces try to dicker with you over every little thing like they aren’t going to strip it for parts anyways. Compared to all that, lake runs are easy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Terry gives him the keys to the car, and Mickey does end up with his brothers, sitting on the couch, drinking a beer, and waiting for dark to come so he can head out. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s almost eleven when he pulls the car into the Clark Street Beach parking lot. The park is technically closed, but he’s done half a dozen runs like this with his father and never seen more than a park ranger on the site, and all he had done was take a few hundreds from Terry and leave without a word. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tonight he parks the car in the shadows, away from any working street lights, and follows a pre-programmed GPS down the beach until he’s walking through underbrush. Eventually he comes out in a mostly-hidden cove, barely large enough to stand along without getting his feet wet. He sees only two other teenagers while he’s walking, but they go on, illuminated in the soft glow of their phones, without glancing at him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s fairly certain this is the right place. The GPS is old enough to be well-past its prime and sometimes loses the signal all together, making him wait for it to zoom back in and find him. But now that he’s standing still, it looks like his dot and the target triangle are right on top of each other. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s colder on the shore - he knew it would be and remembered his sweater - and the lake is so large, when he looks north the lights on the far side can’t be seen. It gives the impression the water is endless. The soft and consistent sound of the waves is incredibly calming, and he sits on the ruins of a steel and concrete barrier and waits. He waits so long he has to get up and stretch after a while, then he sits back down and waits some more. Like when he couldn’t sleep the night before, his forced sabbatical from weed is starting to seem less and less likely. Luckily, there’s none here to tempt him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He stares at the inky black water for almost two hours and then starts to wonder if something happened, or maybe he’s in the wrong place after all. If the boat had come to shore even half a mile away he wouldn’t have seen it. The moon is very small tonight, and almost nothing is visible over the water. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can’t smoke either, getting caught from a glowing cigarette is amateur-hour, but it makes him feel that much more on edge. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The boat does finally come though. He hears the engine before he sees it, a steady rumble he almost misses over the constant sound of waves, but then it’s there gliding across the water heading straight towards him. It’s small, just two seats and only one occupied, and the driver cuts the engine twenty feet out and lets it glide the rest of the way in. When it’s close enough, Mickey steps out a few feet out and helps pull it in, wincing at the way cold water floods into his shoes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The driver is dressed in clothes as black as the lake, complete with a hood and face mask that covers everything below their eyes, and they get out into the water so Mickey can pull the empty boat the rest of the way in. For a second there’s only the sound of shoes splashing and the gentle tick of the motor cooling down, then they’re both on the shore and everything falls silent – except for the waves – again.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span> “Find me alright?” Mickey asks in an unconscious imitation of office small-talk, and the driver holds up their GPS, a much nicer version than his own, as an answer. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Got my money?” They ask, voice muffled by the mask. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Got the stuff?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a mild standoff where neither of them move, but Mickey isn’t impressed with this secret agent bullshit. T</span>
  <span>here was a time when drug dealing had been between families and the connections had been real and respect </span>
  <span>had been the name of the game.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh god, that sounds just like his father, and he doesn’t like the way his thoughts are heading, so he breaks the standoff first and pulls an envelope – not the one with Ian’s handwriting on it, that one’s in his back pocket – out of the waistband of his jeans. He has no idea how much is in there. A few thousand, probably more, but if Mickey had opened it, even just to count it, he was sure Terry would know. Terry </span>
  <em>
    <span>always</span>
  </em>
  <span> knew. He opens it now though, to show it’s there, and waits while the driver goes back to the boat and grabs two large black duffel bags from behind one of the seats. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s all there.” The driver says while the two of them do an awkward hand-off. Drugs for money or money for drugs, depending on which side of the shore you’re standing. He doesn’t know what he’s picking up, so he can’t verify if it’s all there, but the great thing about working with family is you’re never in the wrong with them. If Mickey comes back with less than what’s agreed upon, he’ll say the dealer shorted him, and Terry will have to back him because otherwise he’s calling a Milkovich a liar and tarnishing his own name. It’s a safety net Mickey enjoys without ever putting it in words, and one he’ll eventually have to live without. Tonight, though, if the money is there then the Milkovich’s have done their part, which means Mickey has done his. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wants to be done, too. Back in the car and away from the smell of the lake, pleasantly nostalgic at first but which is now moving into overwhelming territory, and he almost doesn’t ask. The driver waits around, though, like they’re expecting Mickey’s help getting the boat back out, so he figures he might as well. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Got anything else?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They do, as it turns out, have some coke, not yet promised to anyone, and Mickey parts with five hundred of his own money for some he can sell in his downtime and make a profit. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After he helps push the boat back into the water, he watches it slowly drift away before the engine catches and it disappears into the night. He tucks his purchase into his waistband, grabs the duffels, and treks back through the brush to the car. The drive back home is easy, he goes the speed limit the whole way, but doesn’t see any cops. None with their lights on at least. By the time he pulls in front of the familiar fenced yard, the dashboard clock says it’s 3:02am. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His father is still on the couch, sleeping now, and Mickey puts the duffel bags down next to him as quietly as he can. Terry doesn’t stir, but still Mickey feels like he’s somehow, secretly, watching him, and by the time he gets to his room the feeling is so overwhelming he practically slams his door shut to get away from it. </span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>He feels a lot better the next day. The coke is in his nightstand with the remaining money. It’s still a little more than he started with before Ian had meddled, and his only plan for today is to find the redhead and maybe get a job from him. He even gets up before Mandy, for once, and decides to take a shower while there’s still hot water available. He's got only the one pair of pants since Kash shot a hole in his other ones, but now that he has some extra money he can get new ones anytime. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luck is still on his side when he gets to the Kash-and-Grab, and the open sign is facing out. Inside, Ian’s flashy hair is barely visible above a textbook - balanced upright on the counter - and he appears to be studying it intensely from the top of his stool. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I thought you said this place was clean.” Mickey says, pretending to wipe dust off the counter. Ian peaks over his book at him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well I guess it’s lucky for you, you’ll be doing security and not janitorial work.” He’s making it sound like a job offer, but Mickey doesn’t take the chance he’s just joking around. When there’s no answer, Ian continues: “I talked to Linda and she said you can work security for the summer. Paystubs and everything. Should keep that uh…parole skank off your case.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey’s hand comes up to his face, but it must not cover his smile quick enough because he can see Ian’s eyes dart to his lips and back up again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Great. What do you want, a thank you?” He pulls the chemistry book down onto the counter where it lands with a thud, and Ian’s eyes look up at one of the many security cameras. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Maybe later.” He says quietly. Mickey remembers with sudden clarity the semi-offer he had made after Ian gave him that blowjob in his bedroom. An offer made in the heat of the moment, but still. Ian gives no clue as to whether or not that’s what he has in mind, and instead reaches under the counter and pulls out a black wind-breaker.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He explains it’s Lip’s from two summers ago, when the cops did that whole crack-down on teen drinking, and the neighborhood bar had paid him under the table to sit out front and check ID’s. When Mickey holds it up, he can see large letters on the back that he knows spell out SECURITY. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Anyways, I figured you could wear it.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What, like a uniform?” Mickey asks. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah. Unless you’d rather wear an apron. I think we still have one stashed back here somewhere.” Ian leans back on the stool and pretends to look while he talks. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll take the jacket.” Mickey pulls it on over his own shirt. “When do I start?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Tomorrow, I guess. If you’re free. But I have to take off in a few today.” He looks down at his chemistry book, sighs, and says, “Summer school.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Great. Have fun with that.” Mickey can tell he sounds bitter, but saying it like that makes him feel better for whatever reason. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So, you’ll be here then, tomorrow?” Ian asks, ignoring Mickey’s tone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, sure. The fuck else do I have to do?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay.” Mickey replies. There doesn’t seem to be anything else to discuss, so he should probably leave. Except now Ian is leaning back on the stool again, this time to get a better view of the clock ticking on the wall, and he’s holding on to the counter to keep from spilling over which brings his newly toned muscles out in sharp relief. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Alright, now I seriously have to go or I’m going to be late.” He takes a walkie-talkie from next to the register and tells the person on the other end he’s leaving. Mickey takes that as his cue too and heads out before he can get distracted again. </span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>He forgets he’s wearing the jacket until he’s back at home and Iggy gives him shit for it the second he walks in the door. Mickey calls him jealous because Iggy couldn’t get a job shoveling shit let alone working security, but he takes it off anyways and throws it into his dresser. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did anyone call for me?” He asks when he gets back out to the living room, but the only answer he gets is a belch and slur that may or may not be directed at him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the kitchen, a group of men are gathered around the table. Mickey doesn’t think much of it as he passes by to check the phone until he sees who’s there. His father, a given even though Mickey has no idea how he’s gotten around reporting to work with his own parole officer, two of his cousins from Englewood, and, watching Mickey the way you might watch a spider getting too close for comfort, Nick. No junkie friends this time. Just a stack of twenties bound together with rubber bands on the table under his palm and a gun – not the glock he had earlier, a revolver – sitting next to that like it’s more currency. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey gets a feeling that he doesn’t want anything to do with this, and makes the decision mid-step to get the hell out here for the rest of day at least. Probation can wait. If she really wants to see him, she’ll make good on her promise to come down here, but he doubts it. Who would come here if they didn’t need to? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he makes it back to his room, he grabs the coke, the money (not to spend, he just doesn’t feel as safe leaving it in the house as he did yesterday), and his backpack. Then, he slides right out of his window and into the yard where an old cardboard box has been rotting below the sill for so long, it’s almost become one with the dirt below. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Summer school Ian had said, and Mickey, though he won’t be getting his own diploma anytime soon, has a feeling he’s not quite done with school yet. As long as he can pass for a student, he’s got easy access to one of the best markets on the south-side. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Instead of nostalgia, or any kind of longing for the days he came here with a class schedule, all he can think as he walks through the doors of the high school is how very much like Juvie the place is. Two metal detectors frame the doors from the inside but they’re shut off and unmanned for the summer quarter. The concrete walls, white except the bright paint highlighting door frames and exit pathways, would be identical to detention centers if not for the rows of lockers and the occasional hand painted sign. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Shawna Johnson for Class Treasurer</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Good Habits Start Here: Keep Phones out of Class</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Even the smell is the same: teenage sweat and industrial cleaning products. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He thinks the similarities might put him on edge but, after the company back home, the mostly empty hallways and classrooms are a kind of relief. One end of the school, towards the back and close to the library, seems particularly busy for the summer. He posts up in the second story bathroom where the wired window opens just enough to let sunlight and fresh air inside. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s slow for half an hour or so, the first few guys to come in either uninterested or too broke for what he’s offering. He would do better with weed, but there’s still the whole summer ahead to start up a business. It stretches out in front of him the same way his sentence had, but creates the opposite kind of feeling. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Soon enough, word gets around in the right way, and eventually even groups of girls are poking their heads in, pooling their cash, and buying the right to party like a real south-sider from a Milkovich, as their own parents had no doubt done however many decades ago. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time Ian comes in, hanging out at the sink looking both amused and disapproving while Mickey finishes his last deal – on credit, but no one’s stupid enough to try to stiff him – he’s almost sold out. Just one dime bag left, but he pockets it along with the cash he has. Almost a grand now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Done selling for the day, he walks out of the bathroom without a glance at Ian, but waits to make sure he’s following before leaving the school. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the concrete steps to the entrance Ian grabs his arm. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey! You’re on probation. What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Are you that desperate to go back?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He shakes Ian’s hand off, but stops walking to answer. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you expect? I doubt a part-time security gig is going to set me up for life.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I had to put up with a lot of Linda’s shit to get you that job. The least you could do is show a little gratitude.” Ian says, and he sounds genuinely annoyed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> grateful, but sometimes Gallagher acts like he lives in a completely different world. A world where the Yards is just a stepping-stone to some better life. It’s a worldview that’s bound to disappoint him down the road, but Mickey doesn’t have the heart to be the one to break it to him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If it was such a pain in the ass, why bother?” He asks sharply and two girls walking down the steps to their right stop to stare, until they catch the look Mickey is shooting them, and continue on. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m just saying, be careful. If they catch you dealing on campus, they won’t let you back in the fall.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He and Ian start walking side-by-side, and there’s nothing weird about it. Just two guys walking together after class. There’s other kids around them doing the same. Some couples holding hands and relishing the freedom of the long night ahead, but also pairs of guys passing smokes back and forth, punching each other's arms playfully, and generally looking more relaxed than Mickey can ever remember feeling in his life. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I already told you,” He answers finally when they’re well out of earshot of anyone else. “I’m not going back. So, shut the fuck up about it.” He makes a fist and cocks his elbow like he’s going to give Ian a good punch, but the other boy doesn’t flinch and he lets his hand fall back to his side without swinging. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian does shut the fuck up about it though, and they walk in alternating bouts of conversation and periods of companionable silence until they reach the Gallagher house. Mickey leans against the front bumper of the broken-down van in their backyard where the summer sun has turned most of the grass crispy and tan while Ian drops his books off inside.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Ian gets back, they stand shoulder to shoulder with the house hidden by the top of the van at their backs, and the setup gives them a faux sense of privacy. Ian stares up at the cloudless, blue sky while he smokes a cigarette he stole right out of Mickey’s hand. Smoke cascades out of his mouth and Mickey watches it with a strong but undirected sense of longing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So, what do you want to do with the rest of the day?” Ian asks after a few minutes of silence. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We could go to the ball-field.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nah, too early. The kids will still be playing there.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The Kash-and-Grab?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck that. I need a break from Linda or I swear I’ll snap.” He says, but his mouth is curled up in a smile that makes him look about as threatening as a Labrador pup. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Christ, Fire crotch, I don’t know then. If you don’t want to hang out just say so.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You could come inside?” Ian says it casually, like he’s only just had the idea, but that only makes it more obvious that he’s been building up to asking all along. The thought sends a sharp stab of annoyance through Mickey's chest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck off” He says and pushes off the van. The heat of the metal has created a pool of sweat in the small of his back and he shivers a little when the air hits it again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wait.” Ian grabs his arm again but this time his grip is strong enough Mickey would have to work to throw him off. “Seriously. It’s just my family. What’s the worst that could happen?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The stab of annoyance becomes a whole dagger.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Watch yourself, Little Mickey</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This time when he balls up his fist, he goes through with it, and his punch lands right in the meat of Ian’s upper arm causing him to yelp and let go. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Ian says rubbing his arm. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Go hang out with your family then, if they’re so fucking great.” Mickey says, already walking away. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This time Ian doesn’t attempt to follow. Instead he yells out: “See you at work tomorrow, asshole! Eight a.m. sharp!” But he still doesn’t sound that mad.</span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey gets fast food with some of the money in his pocket, and eats his burger and fries on the street across from the ball-field where kids are indeed still playing. A small crowd of parents watch from the bleachers and cheer with all the excitement of people who have been made to sit in ninety degree weather to watch a bunch of children fumble a ball around. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It pisses him off that Ian was right: there’s no room for whatever they have in the light of day.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He liked his own mind better when weed had been an everyday thing. He’s not sure he can stand his thoughts since probation has stripped him of the choice to temper them. There’s bound to be beer at home and, unless his parole officer intends to trek down to the south side to check on him everyday, he’s not sure how she expects to keep him away from alcohol at least. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That means going home. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s been hours since he left, and there’s always the possibility Terry’s gotten himself arrested again since then. The thought gives Mickey a little courage as he finishes his fries and tosses the bag they came in into an already overfilled trash can on the side of the street the city seems to have forgotten they put there at all. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Terry hasn’t gotten himself arrested since Mickey left. He’s sitting on the couch drinking beer - exactly what Mickey had planned on doing, but the ideas suddenly lost some of its compellingness - and he looks up when he hears the door close.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come ‘ere.” Terry says, looking back at the TV where a blonde news anchor talks behind a desk. Mickey does as he’s told and sits at the far end of the couch copying his father and staring at the television, but without really seeing it. Terry says nothing else, and the silence between them is a stark contrast to the comfortable ones he shares with Ian. Mickey rests his elbow against the arm of the couch and puts his chin in his hand, very aware of how heavy the food in his stomach is even though he felt fine just a few minutes ago. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When the blonde anchor finishes her segment and the station goes to commercial, Terry says, “Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The question is straight out of Mickey’s nightmares, so it’s almost not surprising to hear it now even though he can’t remember Terry ever bringing it up before. It makes his mind go blank for a moment, and, even when his practical side convinces the rest of him that Terry is not asking if he’s a ‘mo or anything like that, he struggles to come up with an answer. Finally, he settles on a lie. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Had one,” He says, still staring at the TV where a man throws a tennis ball for his old dog because </span>
  <em>
    <span>with cosequin, it’s like he’s a puppy again</span>
  </em>
  <span>. “Guess she didn’t want to wait while I was inside.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The image of Nick sitting at the kitchen table pops into his mind but he pushes it away with terror-driven focus. If he thinks too much about that, about what might have been said, he’ll never be able to get through this without giving his own stupid self away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He forces himself to look Terry in the eyes instead, but when his father looks straight back at him, Mickey turns to the TV again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His practical side falls silent, and Mickey is becoming more certain by the second that Terry knows and this is going to be the one: the beatdown he doesn’t walk away from. He only wishes he hadn’t eaten that burger and drank that whole soda because dying is bad enough without having an upset stomach while you’re doing it. Before he can say something stupid – and really barely any time has passed at all, the station is still playing commercials – Terry gives him a firm wack on his shoulder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah well, fuck her. We’ll get you straightened up.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Straightened up. Sure, yeah. Mickey would love to get straightened up, but somehow he doesn’t think Terry has anything up his sleeve that will do the trick. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Instead of saying so, he gets into the car with his father, who drains the rest of his beer – and one more while Mickey quickly hides his cash back in his nightstand - before they leave. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The radio makes enough noise while they drive to keep the lack of conversation from becoming awkward. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The trip takes less than fifteen minutes, and Mickey spends most of it looking out the window trying to decide where they’re going. They pass the regular liquor store without stopping, the welfare office, the Kash-and-Grab, and when they finally pull into a parking lot behind a few non-descript shops, he’s no closer to understanding what they’re doing than when they left. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He follows his father out of the car, and they walk through a door marked ‘SPA’ and into a room that smells like flowers and lotion. He has a moment of confusion where he’s certain Terry is taking him to a place where people get their nails done, and also dumbfounded as to why that would be the case. He’s still looking around confused when a man in a three-piece suit walks out from behind a curtain zipping up his pants and leaves out the door without looking at him or Terry. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then, all at once, Mickey gets it. He’s had plenty of personal experience getting his ass beat, especially by someone who is too big and too strong to throw off, and how it creates a sort of complacency inside you: at some point your body stops fighting and your mind comes to terms with the fact you can’t make them stop. They are going to hurt you and you </span>
  <em>
    <span>will</span>
  </em>
  <span> take it because you </span>
  <em>
    <span>have</span>
  </em>
  <span> to take it, and even though he’s spent the better part of his teen years learning to fight so he’s the one forcing and not the one being forced, he falls back into that mindset without realizing it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He </span>
  <em>
    <span>will </span>
  </em>
  <span>do whatever Terry wants because he </span>
  <em>
    <span>has </span>
  </em>
  <span>to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He plays with the way the dirty floor sticks to his sneakers while Terry asks the man at the register in this small entry-room if any of the girls are available. The man says one of them is, and the tight knot in Mickey’s stomach might be excitement – should be excitement – or nerves, or even that burger and fries, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels more like he doesn’t want to be here at all, but when the man behind the counter gestures at him to follow and Terry gives him an encouraging smack on the back, Mickey walks his sticky sneakers through the curtain. He waits next to one of the back rooms as the man unlocks a painted black door with an almost comically large set of keys.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fifteen minutes.” He says with a thick Eastern European accent. “No rough stuff.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looks Mickey up and down for a few seconds and whatever he sees must satisfy him because he pushes the door open and steps aside. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Inside the room everything is white and cream. Speckled white tiles, a white massage bed with white sheets, cream colored curtains over the closed window and a cream colored loveseat. On the far side of the loveseat is a white end table and an oversized bottle of lube with a pump on the lid. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You wait. I bring girl back.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The door shuts behind him, and Mickey picks the loveseat over the table without even considering. There’s also a lamp on the end table, but someone’s put a shawl over the shade and most of the room’s light comes through the curtains. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s looking at the bottle of lube for lack of anything better to do when the door opens again and a woman – barely, she can’t be a day over twenty – walks in wearing black short-shorts and no top. Her breasts swing lightly as she walks and her brunette hair hangs just above their nipples. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He closes his eyes for a second and takes a few breaths to settle his stomach even though it must look weird. It’s the feeling of having one drink too many and going from pleasantly buzzed to dizzy and vaguely ill. Despite the fact he’s completely sober, he’s suddenly feeling the horrible urge to vomit on his own lap like a bad belch building in his chest. He gives himself three deep breaths before opening his eyes. The smell, it’s mostly the smell: her perfume, heavy bleach, and a musty scent coming from the couch and the curtains. Also, that nerve-wracking conversation with Terry earlier. When Mickey had been momentarily certain his father had heard one too many rumors about his youngest son. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can do this. He’s done it before with girls from school, but Terry’s never been waiting right outside. The woman is looking at him dispassionately, and Mickey feels the dizziness fade into the background as he’s hit with a wave of irritation. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The fuck you looking at,” He says sharply, “You ain’t getting paid to stand there.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She gives a half-roll of her eyes like she’s seen a thousand guys like Mickey and she’s not impressed, but his bad temper seems to make her feel comfortable and she takes the spot next to him on the loveseat. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You take off pants.” She says with the same accent as the man, and he starts working the button and zipper of his jeans down with fingers that are still mostly steady. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Please, god, don’t let them shake.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Since when has god ever seen fit to show mercy to a Milkovich? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He gets his pants and boxers down to his knees without incident. Then looks the woman in the eyes and silently dares her to say something about the size of his dick or how it’s still completely soft, hiding in the loose skin of his balls as if this situation is something they can run away from. She doesn’t say anything though. Instead, she reaches out and wraps her skinny fingers around it with a speed and familiarity that makes him twitch back against the worn fabric of the couch in surprise. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her grip is firm and never varies, and Mickey sees one of her fake nails has chipped off revealing the short, natural one below. He closes his eyes again, breathes deep through his nose and lets his head fall back as she works. He doesn’t think about Ian – not here and now, never like this – and instead falls back into an old and well-worn fantasy. It involves him and his favorite action hero, a boat stranded at sea, and if even the slightest detail of it was ever discovered by another person, Mickey would consider it grounds for murder. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It works, after a few minutes his dick does start to respond, and he gets harder under her hand even though her fingers are cold and every so often one of her nails pinches his skin painfully. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Everything almost works out - fifteen minutes will be enough time to get there - but then she leans closer, maybe trying to be seductive, and her bare breast brushes against his arm. This close, the floral scent of her and the feeling of her skin against his cuts through the fantasy. He can’t get the image of her coming through the door with them hanging out like that from his head. After that, t</span>
  <span>he more he tries to force himself to respond to her hand, the less he’s able to, and he starts to think how much he hates his stupid, messed-up body which only makes things worse. Faster than it took to get hard, he’s soft again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s okay to be nervous,” She says when it’s clear they’re not getting anywhere. “I use my mouth?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay.” He says with no conviction at all that it will make the problem go away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He </span>
  <em>
    <span>will</span>
  </em>
  <span> do this because he </span>
  <em>
    <span>must</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It shouldn’t be this difficult, but a part of him is still certain Terry </span>
  <em>
    <span>knows</span>
  </em>
  <span>. If he can just finish for this hooker then it will be obvious he’s straight. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>has </span>
  </em>
  <span>to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A good five minutes pass, and the woman tries, she really does, but with each successive swipe of her tongue, he gets further and further away from an erection. Eventually, she does them both a favor and pulls off until she’s back in a sitting position. His eyes are still closed, but he can feel her staring at him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There is something wrong?” He can hear the question in her tone, but it might as well be a statement. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah there is.” He snaps, finally opening his eyes. “You suck at this. Who told you you’d make a good whore? Because they were fucking wrong.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There is nothing wrong with technique. Is perfect.” She says defensively, wiping her mouth. When she looks at him, her gaze is angry and challenging. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Whatever.” He says pulling up his pants and feeling a rush of relief at not being exposed anymore. “You’re lucky I don’t tell your boss about the shit work you do. So, just…forget it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He gets to the door, but makes the mistake of glancing back at her before he leaves. She’s looking at him, still with an angry scowl on her face, but her eyes are cold and scrutinizing like she knows.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Everyone </span>
  <em>
    <span>knows</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he gets back through the curtain and to the entry room, there’s another man waiting, but no Terry. It’s a relief and he doesn’t even mind if he'll have to walk back home; the time alone is worth it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The relief disappears when he pushes open the swinging door to the parking lot. At first he’s temporarily blinded by the sudden, early-evening sunlight, but he hears Terry’s voice and smells the cigarette smoke before his eyes clear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There’s my boy.” Terry says. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His father and the man from behind the counter are standing a few feet away smoking together. That ill, might just throw up on the asphalt, feeling returns with a vengeance, but he takes a cigarette when his father offers and lights up while the parking lot heat bakes into the well-worn soles of his sneakers. He knows he should say something, but his mind offers up nothing in the way of small-talk for this situation. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Terry saves him from whatever he would have blurted out by continuing his conversation with the man while Mickey smokes through his cigarette and prays that the woman doesn’t come outside before he manages to get away. After a few minutes, Terry and the man wrap up their conversation naturally. Mickey feels some of the weight from the last hour falling off him when he finally sits in the passenger seat and the car door closes with a metallic screech. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good enough to forget that other bitch, huh?” Terry asks, pulling himself into the driver’s seat with a grunt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah. She was great.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Was he supposed to have gotten her name? He tries to picture the few times he’s watched his brothers walk out of back rooms like that. He can picture them buttoning up their pants and wiping their lips where goofy smiles turn their faces into those of children, but he can’t remember anything they had said in the moment. Terry remains silent though, and Mickey hopes he’s not shooting himself in the foot when he adds, “Nice tits.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The next ten minutes pass in silence until they pull up in front of the house. Neither of them gets out. Terry leaves the car running, and Mickey can feel some unidentified tension in the air between them. He doesn’t want to leave it this way, and neither, apparently, does Terry. He turns off the car but doesn’t move, just sits there with his hand on the keys in the ignition. Mickey can feel a storm brewing and becomes very aware of the expression on his face; he tries to keep it neutral. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thanks, dad.” He says without really thinking about it. It was a gift, after all, something nice because Terry had wanted to cheer him up, help him out. It’s the exact right thing to say, possibly the only right thing, and the tension in the car disappears like it was never there to begin with. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, yeah.” He pats Mickey on the shoulder in a much softer way than usual and, even more striking, smiles. “You’re alright, Mick.”</span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey goes straight to the kitchen when he gets inside. There’s a case of beer in the sink, two unopened forties on the counter, but what he really wants is something cold. He has the feeling if he can just drink an entire can of anything, as long as it’s ice cold, his stomach will stop doing loop-de-loops and give him a fucking break already, but there’s nothing in the fridge. Not a single can. The only contents are a very old bottle of Heinz yellow mustard and, for reasons known only to the person who put it there, an empty bread bag. He has no way of knowing that Terry drank the last cold beer right before their little trip to the ‘spa’, but if he had known, it wouldn’t have surprised him one bit. Life will shit on you like that sometimes, and there’s nothing Mickey – or anybody else for that matter – can do about it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Instead of slamming the fridge door over and over again until something magically appears - even though he kind of wants to - Mickey walks almost a mile to the nearest chain grocery store where there’s no Linda to mark up the prices, and the selection is bigger than just the shitty stuff people only buy because it’s the closest place that’s open. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He has a fake ID but picks the sleepiest, most bored looking checker, and they don’t ask. Instead of risking the beer getting warm on the walk home, he drinks three cans, one right after the other, in the back lot where the delivery trucks bring their loads of groceries. There’s no one back here now though. Just silence, shade, and the warm, welcome hand of intoxication. He’s not sure if he had been overheating, if it’s the carbonation, or if he really was just craving the beer itself, but he feels a lot better after he finishes off the third one and throws the can. It lands with a satisfying clank in the open dumpster to his left.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I wish Ian was here</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he thinks and he can’t even be mad at himself because he really does. He wishes that they were here together, talking or just drinking, and, for a boy who's never consciously longed for anyone to be around when he was alone, it’s a very strange realization. He does feel a little bad for walking away earlier, but Ian is completely divorced from reality if he thinks they’re going to start dating or something. Like there’s any future for them beyond quick fucks in empty places like this one where no one else thinks to go. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Still, he does wish Ian was here now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Back at home, Terry’s gotten into the case of beer in the sink but hasn’t yet drank away his good mood. Mickey can’t quite get into his room fast enough to avoid being roped into work for the night though, and he’s forced to join the other male Milkovich's around the kitchen table where a AAA map of the heights has been spread out in the same spot the drugs and money had been earlier. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mandy’s here too, and he shoots her a jealous look she chooses to ignore as she strains a large pot of noodles into the sink. As the girl, and baby, of the family, she’s almost always left out of whatever stupid schemes Terry plans.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Through the usual methods of terror and intimidation, Iggy has convinced an ADT salesman to share details of houses in one of the East Side neighborhoods that have yet to invest in a home security system. Terry has plenty of thoughts about how the company got this information in the first place, the amount of surveillance going on in the country, and how those elitists in Washington are just jizzing in their thousand dollar pants thinking about all the power they have over the working man. The right thing to do - the </span>
  <em>
    <span>American </span>
  </em>
  <span>thing - is to teach those fuckers the value of a dollar by taking their things.   </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the map, about twenty houses have been circled, and tonight's work will be casing each of them individually, as inconspicuously as possible, to determine which have the best driveways and landscaping to carry out large electronics and paintings without drawing unwanted attention. Mickey, by virtue of being the youngest and the car only comfortably seating four, gets map duty and will have to spend the better part of the night in the kitchen taking calls on a burner and making notes about each potential location. He’d mind a lot less if he got a cut, but as far as the other Milkovich’s are concerned, Mickey’s still free labor. Another problem in his life, but not a fire – not yet – and he’ll continue to let it slide until an opportunity in the pecking order comes up. For now, if he wants to make money, he can do it on his own time. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When the pasta’s ready, Mickey eats his share leaning against the kitchen counter with Mandy while the other four sit at the table. There’s no sauce, but there’s butter and sprinkled parmesan which is how he likes it anyways, and he eats it slowly – savoring it. Mandy is the only one left who knows how to use the stove with any degree of skill, and these days she’d rather do just about anything else than cook for them. He thinks about Ian’s mother and wonders if the Gallagher’s ever have home-cooked meals. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The coke’s still in his pocket, the last baggie he didn’t get the chance to sell, and when Terry and the others leave to scout out the easy marks, he and Mandy each do a line. They sniffle and stick their tongues out at each other when the bitter taste hits the back of their throats, feeling a little younger than they are for a few minutes together. After that, she disappears into her room and Mickey is left to wait for the first call alone while his leg jitters and his hand beats the pen in a rhythmic tap against the table. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With no one around to distract him, his thoughts race and turn inward. He thinks about the future, imagines making enough to get out of this shithole city and somewhere the name Milkovich doesn’t mean anything to the people on the street. New York, he thinks. New York, New York. He and Ian could live there in complete anonymity. Hell, he could even change his name. Mickey McClane, or something cool like that. Yeah, sure. The two of them, all alone. No Terry, no Frank. They could have an apartment and he could take care of Ian. How much does an apartment cost? He has no idea, but if that shithead Kash could afford to take care of his bitch wife and kids then Mickey can sure as shit take care of Ian. They could be anything they wanted to. Fuck probation (</span>
  <em>
    <span>oh shit, I was supposed to stay clean</span>
  </em>
  <span>). Fuck school. Fuck West Point and RoTC. Mickey and Ian can be free. Together. And he’d never have to get it up for another whore with swinging tits that touch his arm and make him want to scream. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey almost does scream when the phone next to him rips him out of his thoughts with a sharp ring, but the impulse passes immediately and his voice is steady when he answers and starts his long night of note taking. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not twenty minutes later, a knock comes at the door but Mickey’s too engrossed in what he’s doing to look up. The last call already ended, but he’s doing his best to remember everything that was said and write it down in the small spaces between street names. Mandy must get it because he hears the door open and close, and her voice comes through the living room into the kitchen. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But no one’s home now so it’s cool. Well, except Mickey.” He looks up at the sound of his name just in time to see Mandy wave him off as inconsequential. Behind her, Ian is there looking even better than he had this morning in his full military outfit, hat and all. Mandy continues: “You hungry? I think we have some PopTarts left.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They don’t. Mickey checked ten minutes ago, but while Mandy goes to see for herself, Ian follows her into the kitchen and looks at the map over Mickey’s shoulder. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know that’s not a word right.” He points to something Mickey’s scrawled on one of the houses. “Are you trying to spell ‘coverage’?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey can feel the scowl on his face, the shake of his leg which hasn’t quite caught on to the fact he’s no longer high, his tight grip on the pen turning his knuckles white, but still Ian doesn’t look down or away. It’s Mandy who feels the tension and she reappears almost silently, tugging at Ian’s arm and pulling them both into the living room. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t.” She says, but Ian looks relaxed as he turns around and wraps an arm around her shoulder. They settle on the couch while Mickey goes back to work waiting on the next call. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It takes most of the evening to mark off the unsuitable houses, and in the end only three look good enough to really case. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time Terry and the others yell into the phone that they are going to the 'BAR' to get 'DRUNK', the clock in the kitchen says it’s eleven. The credits are rolling on Mandy and Ian’s movie but neither of them have gotten up to change it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He has to shake out his hand and stretch his back when he stands, and he leaves the pen, burner, and map on the table for someone else to deal with. There’s still a sprinkle of cheese on the corner of the map where Terry ate his dinner, so Mickey figures it can’t be that important to him. What he really wants is another bump, but he’s not going to risk it; it’s not worth going back to Juvie for. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before heading to bed, he shuts off the TV and looks at the sleeping pair on the couch. Mandy is breathing deeply, slumped to the side leaning against Ian’s shoulder. Ian’s breath is also slow and steady, his eyelids closed but fluttering slightly, and his head is resting on Mandy’s. They look perfect and comfortable and Mickey hates it because he’s going to have to wake them up. If Terry comes home wasted and finds them like this, Mickey isn’t sure what would happen, but knows it’s better not to chance it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian </span>
  <em>
    <span>and</span>
  </em>
  <span> Mandy? Sure, Mickey could take care of them both. An apartment far away where no one can find them, and they could fall asleep on the couch whenever they want. Maybe there’d even be a spot for him on it. And why not? It’s his fantasy after all, but to seventeen year-old Mickey Milkovich that’s all it is: a fantasy. Without the help of drugs to envision it, Mickey can see clearly he’ll never be able to provide for the two of them; let alone three. He has no high school diploma, no college degree and no chance of ever getting one, for fuck’s sake he can’t even spell coverage. He’s never going to be able to get away from this house, from his name, and the horrible truth of it all sneaks up on him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He nudges first Mandy, then Ian, awake. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t sleep here.” He says once Mandy opens her eyes and really starts to look at him. “Dad’s coming home later; you should go to bed.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She grumbles a bit, but gets up and stretches, pulling a sleepy Ian up with her. They both look at him annoyed, like he’s the reason they can’t sleep on the couch. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, man. We missed the end of the movie.” Ian says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Everyone but the good guy dies.” Mickey quips even though he wasn’t paying attention. Mandy wakes up enough to smack his arm. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Now you spoiled it, shithead.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He thinks of a few choice answers to that, but none of them are worth it to say. So he goes to his room, collapsing onto the bed in a way that makes the springs groan, without saying anything. He’s still pissed at himself for the coke, and the bed is particularly comfortable tonight in contrast to what’s waiting for him if he fucks up again and gets sent back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The bedroom door is open and he’s tired, just starting to drift off with his face pressed against the pillow, so he doesn’t hear Ian until the other boy is inside his room and says quietly:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You have this whole room to yourself. It’s nice.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The fuck is your-” He starts to say angrily, but Ian holds up a shushing finger to his own lips and Mickey cuts himself off. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Ian. It’s just Ian, </span>
  </em>
  <span>his brain tells his hammering heart. While he watches, Ian reaches out to close the bedroom door, turning the knob while he does it to keep from making noise. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Outside Mickey’s open window, the L passes by temporarily blocking out the sounds of cars and barking dogs, and they both stay still until it passes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mandy’s asleep. She thinks I left.” Ian says quietly once the sound of the train has faded away. When Mickey doesn’t answer, he comes and sits on the bed. “I’m sorry about earlier. Can I stay for awhile?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t you have homework or some shit?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah...basically always.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian does look tired. Not just physically, but tired in the way Mickey feels tonight: wrung out. Instead of kicking him out, like he really should do, Mickey sits up and gives him more room on the bed. There’s still a lump in his front pocket, and he takes the dime bag, the money he made, his cigarettes and zippo out and tosses them into the front drawer of his night stand while Ian watches.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why did you put the money back? I told you to take it.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For a moment, Ian looks confused but then smiles and shrugs. He pulls himself further onto the bed until his back is against the wall and they’re sitting perpendicular to each other. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Found this underground fighting ring, and we got pretty deep into it at the beginning of the year. I needed some cash to make the first couple of bets, but it’s your money. Minus my fifteen percent cut.” He says the last part with a smile. Mickey has a sudden insight that there’s no point asking him why he didn’t take </span>
  <em>
    <span>all </span>
  </em>
  <span>of the money instead of just fifteen percent because Ian </span>
  <em>
    <span>hadn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>taken all of the money, and that’s answer enough.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thanks.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not something he’d normally say but, still, the way Ian’s eyes widen in surprise is a bit of an overreaction.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Holy shit. Did you just thank me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t expect another one.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He leans over intending to give Ian a whack on the arm, remembers how hard he had hit him earlier, and changes his mind. He puts his palm on Ian’s face and pushes it towards the wall instead. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s so much easier to draw lines in the sand, to say he’ll never risk messing around in his room again, when Ian isn’t right here in front of him, solid and real. Mickey pulls his hand away, not wanting to feel how soft and warm the other boy’s skin is, but it makes little difference when the house is silent and the door is closed now and the months they spent apart have eroded Mickey’s self control away to almost nothing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll see you at work tomorrow.” He tries, but Ian doesn’t take the hint. His hands touch Mickey’s hips over his jeans and then go to his waistband like they should start undressing instead of saying goodbye.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’ll just take a few minutes. No one will know.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey listens, the sounds outside haven’t changed and still the house is so quiet. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Who will know?</span>
  </em>
  <span> He’ll know, of course. He’ll know he had promised himself he would never mess around with Gallagher in his bedroom again and then broke the promise without so much as a fight. When Ian’s hands pull at his jeans, trying to get them off without Mickey’s help, he starts feeling uncomfortable for an entirely different reason, pushes Ian’s hands off, and stands up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Technique is perfect</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey doesn’t want to think about that right now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>There is something</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...wrong?” Ian asks and Mickey misses the first half of the question but knows what he said anyway. How can he explain he doesn’t want to take his clothes off because he might not get hard again? That there might actually be something </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong</span>
  </em>
  <span> with him? He can feel himself rubbing his lips - a stupid nervous habit that only makes them dry and chapped - and makes his hands stop and go back to his sides where they can’t give anything else away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.” He says. Ian is looking at him and he’s starting to feel ridiculous so he continues, “I did promise. That I would…” He gestures vaguely towards Ian’s crotch.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Blow me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, alright.” His hands move back up to his face, but this time he doesn’t notice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay.” The bed squeaks a little as Ian works his camo pants down. The bedroom door stays closed; the world outside the room continues to leave them in peace. Mickey fully intends to keep his word, racing heart or not. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Have you ever done this before?” Ian asks as he stands up to get his pants the rest of the way off. Mickey has the terrible suspicion he’s blushing and he keeps his hand by his face in the hope that will cover it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, but you can pay a whore twenty bucks to do it behind the welfare office so how hard can it be?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s kind of hot.” Ian says, “Not the thing about whores behind the welfare, but that it’s your first time.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If it’s a joke, neither of them laugh.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before he can lose his nerve, he puts his hands on Ian's hips and pushes him down into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, then lowers himself until he’s on his knees in between Ian’s legs. This close, he can see Ian’s dick - not fully hard yet, but getting there - as it gives a twitch of interest when his hands come close to touching it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The situation is sparking his own interest too. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His worries about earlier had been baseless. The warmth spreading through his body from the sexual tension in this room is already doing more for him than that woman's acrylic nails ever could. His hands run along Ian’s upper thighs, and he tries to decide how to start. He’s open to suggestions, but receives none. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the end, he starts simple. One of his hands stays on Ian’s thigh and the other one wraps around his cock, giving it a loose stroke downwards. Then he stokes back up, but with a firmer grip this time. Ian leans back on his arms and sighs, spreading his legs wider.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck yeah, Mick. Take your time.” It sounds like a request, not a joke at his expense, and Mickey pulls himself in even closer so he really can take Ian’s cock into his mouth if he wants to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s so daunting. He just keeps moving his hand steadily, stroking until Ian is squirming and pushing his hips into Mickey’s fist, and he knows he has to do it now or he never will. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He leans forward for real this time, puts his free hand on the mattress for better leverage, and Ian falls completely still. Mickey puts his tongue out and licks a long stripe from his fist all the way up to the tip. Then, he gets a better idea of what he could be doing, and wraps his lips around Ian’s cock taking a few inches into his mouth where he can feel it twitch this time, against his tongue. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian swears and then says Mickey’s name in the exact same tone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t take it any deeper, doesn’t pull off. Instead, he uses his tongue to lick and flick against Ian’s cock, just below the head, until he sees Ian’s hands tighten against the sheets and feels his hips bob up and down gently like he’s urging Mickey on. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No fantasies playing through his mind, nothing touching him, just Ian’s stiff cock rubbing against the roof of his mouth and the strangled noises he’s making, but Mickey’s own dick is hard in his pants now. His jeans are uncomfortably tight, but he doesn’t bother adjusting them; every time he moves, it’s only to get a better angle. The deeper he takes Ian into his mouth, the more the other boy twists and fidgets below him and digs his fingers tighter against the mattress. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey starts to bob his head, pulls off when he feels like he’s going to gag and focuses his mouth on the top half while his hand works the rest. His own spit is running down his knuckles and making everything so slick, but there’s no room for embarrassment when Ian is right above him letting out tiny whines every time Mickey hits a good spot. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh my god...Mickey...feels so fucking good.” Ian says and it makes Mickey move faster, squeeze tighter, and lean forward even more until his hair is brushing against the front of Ian’s camo jacket. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jesus. Please. There. Oh.” Ian never makes this much noise, even when he’s balls deep in Mickey, and maybe it’s because he’s not doing any of the work or maybe he’s just trying to be as encouraging as possible, but it’s making heat spread through Mickey’s stomach. His body is responding to everything they’re doing: the way Ian’s back is arching, his hips rocking between Mickey’s fist and the mattress, the soft words spilling out his mouth, the feeling of spit running down Mickey’s fingers, and the salty taste of Ian’s cock in his mouth making his jaw ache and forcing him to breath through his nose. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He could stop, come up for air and finish Ian off with his hand, but there’s a burning ache inside him that demands he keep going. He doesn’t just want to jerk Ian off, or even get fucked by him, he wants to make him come like this and taste it when it happens.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The thrilling part is, he knows he can. Ian is coming apart and it’s all because of the things Mickey’s tongue and lips and hands are doing. There’s no more words now except for ‘please’ whispered over and over again like Ian is begging him, </span>
  <em>
    <span>begging Mickey</span>
  </em>
  <span>, for something he can only get here and now from exactly what they’re doing. He doesn’t have to beg. Mickey wants this too, maybe even more than Ian does, and he can’t remember ever being so focused on something as he is right now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Their rhythm is stable. Ian’s hips twitch upwards at the same time Mickey’s mouth and fist go down making wet, sexual sounds that will fill his fantasies for the next few weeks. Still, he has no idea how close Ian is until he hears him say, “Stop, oh god Mick, I’ll come.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t stop though; It’s not up to Ian what he does next. Mickey’s about to finish in his own pants, can feel his orgasm building even as Ian’s thighs press tight into his shoulders. Instead of stopping or pulling away, he hollows his cheeks and takes Ian as far back into his throat as he can without actually gagging. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span> “Mick, wait, I-” Is the last thing Ian manages to choke out before he comes right into the back of Mickey’s throat. It’s warm, makes him gag before he can actually swallow, but Mickey can’t remember a moment of such complete satisfaction as pulling off Ian’s cock and still tasting him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he looks back up, Ian is staring at him. Eye’s wide and full of surprise and his ROTC hat still sitting lopsided on top of his head. The urge to get himself off is now overwhelming and Mickey undoes his zipper, slips his hand into his pants, and jerks himself off looking straight at Ian. It takes almost nothing, just a few strokes and he’s gasping and soiling his boxers while Ian watches the whole thing from the bed, eyes still wide.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he’s able to think again, Mickey realizes how much his knees hurt and stands up to stretch. The house is still blessedly quiet. Outside, the only sounds are a distant siren and the answering howls of dogs. There’s a wet spot he can feel spreading down his boxers and jeans, and he can still taste Ian’s cum on the back of his tongue. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It seems like the embarrassment should come now that they’re no longer in the thick of it, but it’s easy not to feel any when he sees Ian. His pants on the floor, thin, pale legs spread, his half-hard cock resting against the hem of his official-looking jacket, and his eyes following Mickey’s movements with no hint of their own embarrassment. All of it is only making Mickey want to go again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He peels off his shirt, sweaty from the heat of the room and tosses it onto the couch behind him. Before he can get to his soiled jeans, Ian leans forward to pull them off himself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now he’s the one standing in his room naked as Ian falls back on the bed, stroking himself slowly and distractedly, and they’re both still breathing heavily, covered in a sheen of sweat, watching each other. The noise of the siren has faded and been replaced with the sounds of two neighbors arguing through their own open windows. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looks at Ian and tries to think ‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>Tell me how that was. What do we do next?’ </span>
  </em>
  <span>without saying it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian’s not a mind reader, but he says, “Come over here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey does, and while he gets onto the bed, leaving his pants in a puddle on the floor behind him, Ian takes his camo jacket off revealing the old t-shirt underneath. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What are you thinking about?” Ian asks, touching Mickey’s leg in a familiar way as though there’s nothing strange about them being naked - or mostly naked in Ian’s case - in bed together.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey shakes his head. How is he supposed to answer that? The second he tries to think about what he’s thinking about, his mind goes blank. Let alone being able to actually put it into words. He shrugs, but Ian’s still looking at him like he’s waiting for an answer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m thinking, ‘Are you going to sit here and stare at me all night, or are we going to bang?’”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The train goes by as Ian answers that yeah, they can bang, and Mickey almost misses the exasperation in his voice when he says it. Almost.</span>
</p>
<p><span>What does he expect anyways? An essay about how giving a blowjob just made Mickey shoot a load into his own jeans? Did he want to know how it had tasted - somehow both salty and bland at the same time - and how the more Mickey thinks about it, the more he wants to do it again? Those are things that shouldn’t be said out loud. Shouldn’t </span><em><span>have</span></em> <span>to be said out loud. Everything they do together would be unacceptable, impossibly embarrassing, outside of their unspoken pact to never mention it again. It’s just sex. And sex, when you think about it, is pretty damn ridiculous no matter who’s doing it. </span></p>
<p>
  <span>He can’t say any of this out loud.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian gives up on trying to get him to, and grabs him by the back of the knees instead pulling him towards the bottom edge of the bed. Mickey could struggle, or tell him to cut it the fuck out, but it’s a miracle they’ve stayed as quiet as they have for this long; he doesn’t want to risk waking Mandy just so they can argue over what position he’s going to get fucked in. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian gets him all the way to the edge of the bed, still on his back, before going to get the lube from the nightstand. But when he opens the drawer he pauses, and then looks back apologetically. Mickey guesses what he’s going to say before he says it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t have any condoms.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Laying on his back - feet dangling over the edge of the bed and his head tilted so he can look at Ian upside down - makes it hard to shrug, but Mickey does his best. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So?” He asks. He hasn’t had sex with anyone since his first time with Ian, and what does it matter anyways? He’s never gotten anything, but had taken Mandy to the clinic when she thought she had last year and wasn’t afraid to go himself if he needed to. Besides, there’s enough left over antibiotics stashed around the house he probably wouldn’t have to go in at all even if he did get something. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What? Are you worried about AIDS?” He asks when Ian doesn’t respond.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Ian lets out a small laugh. “Have you been messing around with anyone else?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do blowjobs from Russian whores count?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.” Ian says, but he gets the lube without waiting for an answer. Maybe he’s feeling the same troubling ease of crossing boundaries when they’re together that Mickey often does. If he is, he doesn’t mention it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Ian’s back between Mickey’s legs, hard again and pressing in slowly, he says, “If anything’s going to kill me, I hope it’s this.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey isn’t thinking about the condom, though. He’s up on his elbows watching as Ian’s dick disappears inside him. Both his legs are hooked over Ian’s arms and there’s no getting around how exposed he feels like this. The sight from above must be something too because Ian is looking down, mouth open and hat hanging low over his brow. He doesn’t seem aware he’s spoken at all. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eventually, Mickey has to fall back on the bed and lets his eyes close. Ian goes slow and deep, pulling Mickey’s legs up to get a better angle once he’s all the way in before pulling back out again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Like that.” Mickey says but his voice comes out quiet and strained. Still, he gets a soft, ‘Mhmm’ in reply before Ian pushes back in again. Ian’s cock gets deep enough to make it feel like it must be rearranging his insides, and then just stays there. It makes Mickey whimper in a way he’s never heard himself do before.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re so fucking perfect.” Ian says and Mickey doesn’t have it in him to argue with that right now. They keep going slow until he’s is fully hard again, and then Ian starts to really fuck him in earnest. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s late into the night now, even the neighbors have stopped arguing and gone to sleep, but in here, you wouldn’t know it’s past bedtime. The sounds of their heavy breathing, and the slick slide of Ian’s moving in and out of him, and the steady thump of the bed against the wall, fill the room. Mickey strokes himself remembering how it had felt to go down on Ian, imagines doing it again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I wanna do that again.” He says for the pleasure of watching the other boy’s reaction and he’s not disappointed. Ian lets out a strangled moan and digs his fingers into the flesh of Mickey’s thighs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re so good at that. So good at this. So fucking hot.” The words pour out of Ian’s mouth and the sound of them goes straight to Mickey’s stomach making it feel warm and tight. At the same time, Ian’s cock hits him inside in just the right way, and he surprises them both by coming on his fingers and stomach with a startled groan. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mickey.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck, Ian.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s no condom this time, and when he finishes, Mickey gets to watch the way his face scrunches up in un-selfconscious ecstasy at the same time he feels it inside him. Hot and wet and dripping down his butt and onto the sheets when Ian pulls out; it’s maddening how much he enjoys it. Especially in the minute after. When neither of them can speak and there’s nothing to do but think about what they’ve just done. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian breaks away first. Disappears into the bathroom and reemerges with a damp rag, wiping his dick off. He tosses it to Mickey who does the same while he pulls his fatigues back on. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mick, if I asked,” Ian says, breaking the pleasant silence, while he’s zipping up his jacket. “Would you be my boyfriend?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A moment of less-pleasant silence follows the question.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>If </span>
  </em>
  <span>you asked?” Mickey says while getting the only pair of pajama pants he owns from his dresser, because it’s easier to talk in circles than just saying no and having to see that disappointed look on Ian’s face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If I asked.” Ian agrees. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey makes a show of pulling his pants up and adjusting himself, but when he’s done he still has to answer. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If I were you,” He says when he’s run out of things to do with his hands, “I wouldn’t ask.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wishes Ian hadn’t. Even the word boyfriend makes him feel a little sick to his stomach in this context. In any context, really; Mickey’s no one’s boyfriend, and he can’t imagine a scenario where he would be. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Cool,” Ian says even though the look on his face makes it very clear that it isn’t. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey might have tried to stop him - or maybe he just thinks that to make himself feel better - if Ian had walked past him. Instead, he pulls back the curtain and drops out the window with a quiet grunt just like Mickey does when he doesn’t want to deal with whoever else is in the house. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Once he’s gone, Mickey flips the light back off and falls into bed with enough force to knock the forgotten bottle of lube to the floor. It awakens a dormant anxiety in him and he gets up, turns the light back on, and picks up everything on the floor that even hints at what he and Ian had been doing - the lube, the rag, his soiled pants and boxers - and throws them all into the bottom drawer of his dresser. That done, he checks the bathroom, pulls the sheets of his bed back into place, shuts the lights back off, and finally lays down again where the gentle breeze from the window can dry the sweat on his bare back and lull him to sleep. </span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey’s deep into his dreams when Terry stumbles into the room. A night of fierce drinking almost at it’s black end, but first, he needs to check something. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rumors have been circling - among the young dealers who think they can unseat Terry in his own neighborhood and the even younger whores who have nothing better to do than run their mouths. Rumors about his youngest son. Lies of course. People have been telling lies about Milkovich’s ever since Terry’s branch of the family moved from Ukraine to New York and eventually settled in Chicago. That they are lazy, good-for-nothing thieves; that they would never make anything of themselves. Terry had heard it all by the time he was a young teenager in the seventies, running weed tucked into newspapers across the city for the mob. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now, those same types of people are talking about his son. Spreading nasty lies about Mikhailo. Saying he’s spending nights alone with Frank Gallagher’s son, and that the two of them can be seen walking home together in the early hours of the morning. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something about that triggers a memory in Terry’s mind. That boy and his red hair, and hadn’t Terry walked in on something...but he’s the one dating Mandy. That must be it. Terry must have walked in on Mandy and that kid, but he can’t remember why that seems to bother him so much. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not only that, but now even the girls are talking. Saying Mickey can’t get it up for them, that he wouldn’t spare a glance for a skirt walking down the street. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All lies, but Terry had to hear that shit in front of his friends, in </span>
  <em>
    <span>his</span>
  </em>
  <span> bar where he’s sat at the same booth since that race-traitor Carter was in office. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Terry thinks all this while he tastes the sudsy remnants of last call on his breath and watches his son sleep. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey’s alright. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nothing but lies.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And yet…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Had he babied Mickey? Not Terry, no, but maybe he had let his wife do it. Maybe he had let her keep Mickey close for too long, comfort him too often, coddle him when what he had really needed was a firm hand; a father’s hand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And he had relied on Mickey to raise Mandy. It had been necessary given the state of his marriage at that point. After he went in for that botched burglary, his wife had to get a </span>
  <em>
    <span>job</span>
  </em>
  <span> and once she had gotten a </span>
  <em>
    <span>job</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she hadn’t really been a wife or a mother anymore. Had she? It had also been convenient for Mickey to take on that role, but it isn’t the right life for a young boy. Mickey should have been out shooting cans and chasing the neighborhood girls like his brothers. Not helping Mandy with the chores. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What kind of wife would go to work and leave a boy at home to cook and clean?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Terry doesn’t believe the stories. Mickey is practically a man now and he’s had plenty of girls...hasn’t he? But Terry will watch, will make extra sure, and when Mickey’s married and has a family of his own, those whores will eat their words. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’ll teach Mickey what it means to be a man.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That’s a father’s job, after all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>*-*-*</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Want to's, have to's, can't do's</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Mickey tries to find balance with the different facets of his life, but fails and ends up right back where he started from.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Okay, this was originally going to be two chapters but wasn't quite long enough so I just made it one :p This is the end of Season 2 and next week it'll be the start of Season 3 :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Season 2; Chapter 3: Want to’s, have to’s, and can’t do’s.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s no sign that Terry was ever in Mickey’s room when he wakes up the next day. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At eight o’clock sharp, he heads out to his first day of legitimate work, gets two blocks from his house before he realizes the security jacket is still in his dresser, and he has to go back. So, it’s more like eight-fifteen, but Ian gets off to a good start in his role as boss by not giving Mickey any shit for it. The only customer when he gets there is an old lady buying a few cans of Alpo for her dog, and if she steals them then </span>
  <em>
    <span>damn</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Mickey thinks, </span>
  <em>
    <span>just let her</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian gives him a little tour around the store, and they both act like he didn’t spend most of last year robbing the place. He’s surprised to find that with just the two of them here, he has no problem with the – mostly hazy anyways – memory of being shot. Instead, he feels a familiar warm sensation in his gut when they briefly visit the cooler and the scent of plastic crates reminds him of what they’ve done here. And will do here. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s no time to bang now, though, because apparently Lip is coming by to stock up his ‘ice-cream’ truck and they’re actually going to have to work today. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He hangs by the door, feeling a little out of place with the idea of hours stretching out in front of him. Hours they’re supposed to be here, doing the same thing over and over again, not fucking, while customers come and go. Ian seems perfectly comfortable though, browsing celebrity rag-mags and chatting up complete strangers while they search their pockets for change, so Mickey spends most of the morning watching him, and pretending not to watch him when Ian glances over like he can feel it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lip does come by, along with the local bartender who seems to have integrated himself into the Gallagher family in the same way Mandy is trying to. Mickey has an uncomfortable moment when he wonders if Ian’s older brother will notice what he’s wearing and demand to get his jacket back, but if Lip notices the theft he doesn’t say anything. Instead, Linda orders a sandwich like Ian is a short order cook, and Lip needs help loading boxes, and at no point does Ian tell anyone to go fuck themselves which Mickey thinks is pretty damn admirable.    </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Except for Frank. Ian should very clearly tell Frank to go fuck himself – if that spineless drunk was Mickey’s father and not Terry, things would be a lot different at the Milkovich household – but, for now, Mickey’s happy enough to do it for him. It is his job after all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His real, tax-paying, pay-stub-giving, job.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Have a great sabbatical from your incarceration.” Says the man who wouldn’t last two days in Mickey’s house, let alone prison.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is that the kind of leadership you plan on bringing to the army?” He asks Ian teasingly when Frank leaves.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Says last night’s bottom.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Liking what I like doesn’t make me a bitch.” He says dismissively, and it’s true. No one who chooses to get involved with Ian - Mr. Wake you up to jump your bones, fuck an old Muslim and get you shot, sneak into your bedroom for a blowjob Gallagher - no one who takes what Ian is dishing out, and comes back for more, can be considered a bitch. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey thinks all this while watching Ian work, and looks back down at the magazine before the other boy can catch him staring. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, well apparently it doesn’t make you boyfriend material either.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s exactly the kind of passive aggressive comment Mickey’s mom would mutter when she wasn’t getting her way, and inevitably it would get his dad riled up. Then there would be yelling and screaming and punches would be thrown and, if it was really bad, the cops would show up. Mickey’s not his father though. He doesn’t mind Ian being pissy, kind of likes it actually. Because Ian wouldn’t get pissy at all if he didn’t feel invested in whatever the hell it is they’re doing. It’s scary enough to get this hung up on a person without thinking they didn’t care too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What world are you living in, Gallagher?” He puts the magazine on the rack and comes back to the counter where Ian’s ringing himself up a pack of cigarettes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Same one as you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then act like it!” Mickey says, but a customer comes in before Ian can respond, and they start talking about movies while waiting for them to leave. After that, it’s a few more people and then even more, and the thread of the conversation doesn’t get picked up again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As far as first jobs go, it’s pretty damn nice. Other than the occasional candy bar or bottle of booze, very few things seems to tempt shop-lifters, and when he’s not watching customers he gets to look at Ian. It never gets old no matter how many hours he does it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Around noon, Ian radios to Linda that they’re going on a smoke break and locks the front door. Instead of outside, Mickey follows Ian through the back hallway, they take a left into the cooler, and pick up where they had left off all those months ago, before Kash had walked in. Just without the interruption this time. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’d gladly work for the rest of the evening and through the night too, but, at five, Ian has to leave to study at home and help out with Liam - the youngest, Mickey remembers - and there’s nothing for it but to go home himself for the night. At least this time Mickey remembers to stash his jacket under the register before he leaves so no one can give him shit for it. </span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>Two weeks later, he’s sitting on the couch in his living room holding a packet of paper thicker than anything he’s ever read before, and watching more than a little nervously as his probation officer does a walk-through of the house making notes on a packet and clipboard of her own. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mandy helped him clean the place up, and his brothers all know the drill. So, for the time being, there’s no visible guns, drugs, or beer sitting out. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>While she looks around, every so often she snaps a question at him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are there any firearms on the premises?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She glances down the hallway towards his and Mandy’s rooms.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Have you consumed any alcohol or used any illicit substances in the last fourteen days?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“When was the last time your legal guardian was here?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She looks behind the TV of all places and Mickey has a moment of panic because he doesn’t remember cleaning there, but she must not see anything of interest because she moves on. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This morning. He’s at work now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where do you sleep?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“In here.” He gets up and shows her into his room, also cleaned. Mandy had urged him to take down the Nazi stuff, but Mickey is more afraid of Terry than this bitch, and left it all up. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Recently, Terry has been on his case more than ever. Interrogating him about where he’s been, sending Mickey out on drug and gun runs whenever he makes the mistake of not being busy, and, most annoyingly, suddenly pushing Mickey on things like marriage and kids. Reminding him that he, Terry, had started his family at sixteen and that he, Mickey, needs the love of a good woman if he ever expects to get anywhere in life. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If it wasn’t for Ian, just as determined to make his case for love and commitment as Terry is - though they’d likely disagree on the semantics - Mickey probably would have finally made good on all his fantasies of leaving and gotten the hell out of Dodge.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Probably.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After she glances around his room, and looks out the window at the view, she follows him into the bathroom and watches him piss into a cup which she then tapes up and stacks on top of her clipboard. He’s been good, nothing but a few beers and that one line of coke weeks ago, and if that’s enough to get him locked up again, there’s nothing he can do about it now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Piss in hand, she leaves him with enough warnings to make sitting on his bed with his head in his hands for the next forty-five days seem like the only sure-fire way not to get sent back to Juvie. It’s alright though, or, at the very least, it has to be. Just like Terry’s newfound interest in his private life, and Ian’s continuing disregard for the dangerous reality of their situation has to be alright. All of it is alright as long as Mickey doesn’t think too hard about any one thing in particular, and he’s getting pretty good at that. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The visit takes little more than an hour, but Ian’s at school today which leaves Mickey with nothing else to do with his afternoon. He’s been dealing - despite Ian’s insistence he stops - and has splurged a little on himself when the opportunity arose. A Glock Nineteen and enough ammo to break every window in every abandoned building in the city if he wanted. He does his own target practice under the bridge though, where the gunfire is more or less lost in the noise of the rest of the city.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He takes the Glock - the first gun he’s ever bought himself, and even Terry doesn’t know he has it - packs it and the ammo into a black duffel. Along with some beer he can finally consume guilt-free now that it will likely be a few more weeks before another visit. Then he heads under the bridge, into the shade, where the smell of gunpowder will mix nicely with the already present odors of diesel and rotting scrap-wood stagnating in the summer heat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The first clip he empties without worrying about the spread. He’s thinking about Ian whose continued, fanatical drive to get into Westpoint is almost as worrisome as Mickey’s own bleak future. He reloads the clip.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Pow. Pow. Pow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The first two go high, but by the third he’s hit the bearded, cardboard caricature right between the eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What does Ian want to do in the desert with a bunch of ripped, well-armed guys anyways? Well, besides the obvious. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Pow. Pow. Pow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe that’s it, after all. Maybe Ian is only with Mickey out of convenience. It’s not like their neighborhood is brimming with possible sexual partners for him, but the law of averages gives him a pretty good chance of finding someone hot and smart to share his bed - or bunk - at Westpoint. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He empties the rest of his clip all at once and enjoys the familiar ringing in his ears that briefly blots everything else out. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But if Ian’s just looking for a change in fuck-buddies, why all the boyfriend talk? Why make Mickey say something they both already know? That Ian’s the only person he wants to sleep with. Maybe Ian’s a sadist; maybe he wants to make Mickey admit something he can’t take back. Then, he’ll leave town and tell his future lovers that once-upon-a-time a South Side closet fag had fallen head over heals for him like a fool. Maybe Ian just has a death wish and is disappointed by the lack of ass-beatings their secret bang sessions have gotten them so far, and wants to step it up with dinner dates and a night out at the movies. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He opens a new box and reloads again tossing the other one aside to join the rest of the trash. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As if his thoughts have magical Gallagher-summoning powers, Frank shows up sniffing around his ammo and pulls out, of all things, an old Luger. It awakens something nerdy inside of Mickey and he wouldn’t mind holding it, but he’s not stupid enough to fire a gun that clearly hasn’t been cleaned since soldiers stormed the beaches at Normandy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He turns a blind eye as Frank pockets a bullet though, and feels a little better for the rest of his target practice imagining the old drunk blowing his head off trying to fire the thing. Maybe Ian will stay in the Yards if he doesn’t have to put up with that asshole anymore. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe if Mickey agrees to call him his boyfriend, he won’t leave.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe if he hires someone to break both of Ian’s legs, Westpoint will have to find a different redhead to suck cock in their dorms.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The beer runs out first, disgustingly refreshing after weeks of semi-abstinence, but he sticks around until the last of his ammo is gone. Eventually, there’s nothing left to do but go back home. </span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>The sun’s just starting to set when he gets back, and there’s lights and thumping music coming out of the house as he walks up the front steps. Someone he doesn’t recognize is hanging over the porch railing to his right, and has either just finished vomiting or is about to start. Mickey doesn’t wait around to find out which. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The door to his bedroom is closed, his room is undisturbed, but the work he and Mandy put into cleaning the rest of the house has all but been erased in the hours since he left. The Glock goes into his room, tossed onto his bed before he shuts the door behind him and goes back out. Mandy’s in the kitchen, chatting with someone Mickey recognizes but can’t place, and dancing in place to the music. So she must not mind the new mess too much. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He hasn’t had anything substantial to eat all day, and the smell of pizza coming from the kitchen entices him to grab a slice and go stand by Mandy near the sink. On his way, he tosses the empty duffel into a corner by the armchair where one of his cousins has his tongue so far down some blonde girl’s throat, it’ll be a wonder if he gets it back. He bumps his fist into Joey’s as he passes by him smoking a joint at the window. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a stereo balanced on the half wall between the kitchen and living room, and it’s blasting out a Rolling Stones album Mickey has heard many times before; Mandy is talking loudly with her new friend to be heard over it. Terry and his gun club are sitting around the table playing a silent game of poker with a pile of crumpled five and ten dollar bills between them. None of them look like they’re enjoying themselves, but Mickey notes with familial pride that his father’s own stack of bills sits a little higher than the others. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mandy’s wasted, and high on more than just weed judging by the size of her pupils and the way her body seems unable to stand still. When she notices Mickey next to her, she pulls him into a hug and squeezes until he has to pry her off. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you know Ethan?” She asks. Leaning in close so he can hear her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nope.” Mickey says. ‘Ethan’ makes no attempt to introduce himself and Mickey returns the favor. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He lives,” Mandy continues as though he hasn’t spoken. “He lives...two doors that way and one across.” She makes a few hand gestures that in no way seem to correspond to her words. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay.” He says, and takes a bite of his pizza. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Over by the sink, Iggy’s baby mama is shotgunning a beer and the kid’s nowhere in sight. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>From inside her jacket, Mandy grabs a baggie full of pills - multicolored and hand-pressed - holds it to his face, and shakes it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Want one?”</span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I Knew I Shouldn’t, But Then I Did; The Mickey Milkovich Story, </span>
  </em>
  <span>would be an amazing title for a book about him. He has this thought more than an hour later, just after the second pill Mandy gives him dissolves on his tongue. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Why did I just take that?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He certainly doesn’t need it. His current high, rather than fading, is only growing stronger by the minute. The room has taken on a strange quality to it. Every time Mickey focuses on something - the fridge, the card game, the stereo - everything else around it loses its shape and substance. As soon as he un-focuses again, the rest of the room reappears and he suddenly feels very aware of his own physical presence. He stares with light-headed fascination as one of his father’s opponents at the card table shuffles the deck. Time slows down as the red and white backed cards fly from the tip of the man’s thumb into the palm of his hands. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>To his left, Mandy continues to flirt with Ethan, but the sound of the music is too distracting for him to follow along in any meaningful way even if he wanted to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His body feels light and empty, like he could do one of those leaping spacewalks through the kitchen if he tried. All the better for the steady thrum of the stereo’s bass to move through him. His fingers start to tingle and he holds one of his hands up in front of his face, closing and opening his fist, just to make absolutely sure it’s still connected. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ethan goes to the fridge to get another beer and, without him to listen to her, Mandy quickly turns her attention to Mickey. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did you talk to Ian last night?” She asks, still raising her voice to be heard over the music. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?” he feigns ignorance, but can’t be sure if he’s doing it convincingly or not. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“To Ian?” She says louder as though his non-response was due to not being able to hear her over the music. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The fuck are you talking about?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His foggy mind gives out a vague sense of warning: Terry is sitting with his back to them so he can’t see his face, but something about the sudden tense set of his father’s shoulders makes Mickey think he might be listening in. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nothing,” Mandy answers, shaking her head. “I just thought I heard you guys talking after I went to bed.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I just think it’d be cool, you know, my boyfriend and brother hanging out. You need some friends, Mickey.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ethan lets out a derisive snort from the fridge where he’s listening in. One of the gun-club guys, the one on Terry’s right who has a bulky pitbull laying between the legs of his chair panting, is clearly listening as well. He’s looking with interest at them even though Mickey can’t think of a single reason the old guy has to be curious about what goes on between Terry’s kids and Ian Gallagher.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mickey snaps at Mandy, willing her to shut up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh,” Mandy looks confused by his sudden anger, but doesn’t mention it. “Never mind then.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The album in the stereo comes to an end, and the relative silence when it finishes is deafening. Suddenly the only noises in the house are the loud panting of the dog, the buzz of chatter from the living room, and the whir of the stereo as it cycles through to the next disk. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ethan doesn’t have to speak loud at all to be heard when he says, “How is Ian? Get into the army yet? I heard they take faggots now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey stares at him, too high to react in any meaningful way. He finally remembers where he knows this guy from: the only other time they’ve met, it was early morning and Ian </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> been with him, and he and Ethan - though Mickey hadn’t known his name at the time - had shared a lighter after that piece of shit Nick had pointed out the dirt on Ian’s jeans.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You would know.” Mickey says with a shrug. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The stereo finds the next disk in the sequence, and the opening snare beat to Dani California plays through the speakers while Ethan cracks his beer open with a hiss.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m surprised you want them to hang out so bad.” Ethan talks over his head to where Mandy’s still standing by the sink behind him. “Watch out. He might switch teams.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The fuck did you just say?!” Mickey’s hearing his own voice like it’s far away, and has no idea if it sounds as intimidating as he wants. It’s nothing. A slightly uncomfortable conversation and just bad, bad luck that Terry and his gun buddies are here to witness it. Still, Mickey would pay a lot of money he doesn’t have to go back in time and stop himself from taking either of those pills.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Paranoid. I’m just being paranoid. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But no one at the card table has made a play in over a minute.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nothing, man. Just you two seem tight is all.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course they’re tight.” Mandy says and she wraps both her arms around one of Mickey’s protectively. “Ian’s my boyfriend, and Mickey’s a good brother.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Pretty nice brother,” Ethan says, “To take care of your boyfriend when you’re not around.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s your-” Mandy starts to say, but she’s cut off by the sound of metal chair legs scraping across the linoleum. Terry stands up from the chair, and Mickey feels alarm cut through his brain like a warning system. At least Terry isn’t looking at them, but he can feel Mandy shifting further behind him as though she senses it too. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The dog below the table lets out a low whine at the sudden movement, but doesn’t stand up. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Ethan sees he’s the one Terry is looking at, he leans backwards towards the fridge to put some space between them, but there’s nowhere for him to go. It’s clear from the look on his face he thought this conversation had just been between him, Mickey, and Mandy. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>How could he be so stupid?</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey is high out of his mind, but even he had noticed the way the card game stopped, and how still Terry’s body was; just like it always got when he’s hearing something that’s going to set him off. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Everyone in the kitchen watches as Terry pulls his arm back, turns his hand into a wrecking ball of a fist, and slams it into Ethan’s face. The open can drops to the floor as soon as the punch connects, and it fizzes and rolls along the ground. A stream of beer pools just below the table where the dog laps at it nervously.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The force of the blow knocks the back of Ethan’s head against the fridge with a painful crack. If he was smart, he would have gone down after that, but for some reason he’s still trying to stand when Terry throws the second punch. It hits the guy right in the same spot, but this time it's accompanied by a soft snap as something in Ethan’s face breaks. Blood seeps from his nose and down his lips, turning the lower half of his face red. This time he does go down - practically crumples onto the floor - but he somehow manages to keep his hands up as if that will ward Terry off. Mickey feels Mandy’s hand tighten against his, but can’t remember taking hold of hers in the first place.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That could have been me.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And it probably still will be when Terry’s finished here, but there’s no point thinking about that now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He watches his father get down on his knees, pull Ethan’s neck up by the collar of his shirt, and deliver one final blow to the guy’s already mangled face. This one hits with enough force to knock Ethan’s head down into the linoleum with another hard smack.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After that Terry’s done, and he stands up, wipes the blood off his knuckles, and goes back to his card game. The other players at the table must have seen enough to make minding their own business seem like a good idea, and they all resume playing without comment. The drone of conversation in the living room had stopped for a moment, but it’s already picking up again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Clean that shit up. And get me another beer.” Terry snaps, and Mickey moves to do it even though his mind is still catching up with what happened. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He leaves Mandy behind, and goes to prop open the back door with hands that feel weightless. Everything below his chest is numb and far away. The only parts he’s really aware of are his thudding heart and the sharp sounds of his own breath in his ears. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Back in the kitchen, he grabs Ethan just below his armpits and drags him towards the door. Every so often, the guy lets out a soft groan like he’s trying to get Mickey to stop, but other than that he’s nothing but dead weight in Mickey’s hands. He continues to pull him outside, down the back steps - ignoring the way Ethan’s limp legs thud bonelessly against each one. By the time he gets him through the side yard and onto the sidewalk, his arms and fingers are shaking from the exertion, and Ethan is telling him to get the fuck off of him but makes no move to stand up on his own. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He has no qualms about leaving the guy here. Whatever happens to him next, falls firmly into the category of Not Mickey’s Problem. He’ll likely get up and drag himself home soon enough. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As for reporting the assault, that’s a joke. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Where does a criminal go to report a crime? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Mickey asks himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The answer, of course, is nowhere, and if this guy’s got a clean record, Mickey will eat his own shoe. So Terry will get away with it like always, and everyone else will make themselves scarce if they know what’s good for them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After he leaves Ethan by the street, Mandy reappears behind him throwing her backpack over her shoulder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m getting the hell out of here.” She says, looking more sober than she has all night. “What the fuck was that all about?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey shakes his head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s fucking Terry,” is his only answer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah.” She says, but she doesn’t look so sure. “You shouldn’t stay here either. Do you have somewhere to go?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” He says even though he doesn’t, “You?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sure.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They part after that. Mandy disappears down the street in the directions of Ian’s house, and Mickey goes the other way. He doesn’t know where he’s headed, but wherever he ends up tonight, it won’t be under the same roof as Terry. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s still too high to be comfortable - has to stare at his feet while he walks so he doesn’t stumble - and when he finds himself at the ballpark, he lays across one of the dugout benches. For a few minutes after he lays down, the world around him swims. The wooden roof of the dugout tilts at impossible angles and makes him feel sick until he closes his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s hard to think coherently. His mind is in panic mode processing the new information, but he’s seeing everything through the haze of being high and exhausted. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Terry knows. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>must </span>
  </em>
  <span>know. Why else would he react like that?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t know shit, another part of Mickey argues. Terry would have reacted like that no matter what. So some guy accused Mickey of being a fag. What of it? Tony accuses him of the same thing almost every other day.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But, when Tony does it, he isn’t really - genuinely - accusing Mickey of anything. And when that guy had spoken, he hadn’t been joking. And Terry had beaten the shit out of him-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Because he knows</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>-and if Terry does know then Mickey’s life is over. If Terry know’s, Mickey can’t go home. Can’t be Mikhailo Milkovich anymore. Can’t lay in bed and listen to wrestling on the living room TV. Can’t stand in the kitchen and eat Mandy’s cooking. Where will he go? Who will he be if he’s not Mickey anymore?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eventually his high backs off, the paranoia slips away, his stomach settles, and he passes out in the open, summer air.</span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>He wakes up to the sound of birds chirping somewhere above him. When he rolls over into a sitting position, his head gives a warning throb and his back is so stiff after sleeping on the wood, he has to roll his shoulders a few times to get out the kinks before he can stand. In the grassy outfield, two kids with leather mitts toss a ball back and forth but don’t say anything to him as he stumbles out of the dugout. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Kash-and-Grab isn’t far away, but it takes Mickey the better part of fifteen minutes to walk there. He stops twice to rest, leaning against tape and poster-covered telephone poles with his hands pressed to his temples. The thirst is the worst part. After last night his throat is so dry, breathing through it makes him feel like he’s just swallowed a mouthful of jagged rocks. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If Ian isn’t in the store, Mickey might just break-in for a soda even though Linda would be happy to put him out on the curb for less. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian is there, though, and when Mickey stumbles in the front door, covering his eyes against the glare of the overhead lights, he jumps off his stool behind the counter in alarm. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where the hell have you been?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t stop to answer, walks right past the counter, and grabs a bottle of Mountain Dew from the cooler. He tilts his head back and drains the whole thing in one go while Ian watches, and lets out a belch when he finishes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Holy shit. I was thirsty.” He tosses the empty bottle to Ian who catches it, and grabs a second one from the case. “Take these out of my paycheck.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re not going to get a paycheck if you keep showing up late.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey goes back to the counter and leans across it to look up at the clock. It says it’s nine-fifteen. His feet pull off the floor as he leans further to grab his jacket from where he keeps it, and he likes to think Ian enjoys the view before he pulls back off the counter. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sorry boss. It won’t happen again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not likely, and I’m not your boss.” He points up towards the camera. “Where were you last night? Mandy said something happened with Terry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She stay with you?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The bell over the door rings, and a woman struggles to hold the swinging door open while she attempts to push a stroller over the lip of the doorway. A little baby looks up at Mickey from it and holds one of its chubby hands out while he grabs the snack tray on the front and gives a little heave. The stroller unsticks from the doorjamb, and the lady thanks him as she pushes the rest of the way in. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Ian says when Mickey turns back to him. “Stayed the night I think, but left before I woke up. Where were you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My fucking mansion in the heights. What, I didn’t tell you I had one of those?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian frowns at his sarcastic tone, but doesn’t ask again. A few minutes later he rings up formula for the woman with the stroller and Mickey holds the door open for her as she leaves. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Just tell me you’re alright.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s rubbing his temples too like maybe Mickey isn’t the only one with a headache. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m fine.” He says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But he isn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All day at work, he feels sick. The one night of binging is enough to make him want to stay clean from now on, or until his next drug test at least. The sickening pressure in his chest might also have something to do with his fear Terry will burst in here at any second. His memories of the night before are muddled and confused, but he’s pretty sure something had been said (by him? About him?) that embarrassed Terry in front of his friends. Never a good thing: embarrassing Terry.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can picture that guy too, but his mind refuses to recall exactly what he had said. Something about Mickey and Ian. What he </span>
  <em>
    <span>does </span>
  </em>
  <span>remember, is the sound the man’s nose had made when it broke. He remembers how sure he had been that everyone was listening. Even Terry’s drinking buddies, who shouldn’t know Mickey from any of their own abandoned children. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The panic of last night builds in him again throughout the day, but it’s smaller - more of a background noise in his mind. Once his immediate concern for Mickey’s well-being is satisfied, Ian becomes distracted and doesn’t ask about the previous night again. Tensions at the Gallagher household have been high too, it seems, and Ian pulls up his shirt to show off a bruise Lip’s given him this morning while he was showering. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fucker was never trying to help me get into Westpoint.” He says moodily, or angrily. Sometimes with Ian it’s difficult to tell the difference. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Honestly, Ian’s dreams of getting into Westpoint being dashed is the best news Mickey’s heard all week, but he’s not cruel enough to say that. Gallagher looks genuinely sad about it, and Mickey can’t really make sense of the whole thing because fucking his younger brother over for shits-and-giggles doesn’t seem like something Lip would do. Not that he and Lip have spent much time together - most of what Mickey knows about him, he’s learned from Ian - and Ian seems pretty sure he’s been wronged so Mickey doesn’t contradict him. It’s so much easier, anyways, to listen to Ian and think of responses to his problems than it is to try and deal with his own.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All of Terry’s newfound interest in his personal life, questions about girlfriends, trips to the rub-and-tug, talk about marriage. He doesn’t want to think about any of it, and uses Ian’s problems to try and distract himself instead. He can’t help it, though. By the time work is done for the day, Mickey’s gone over last night in his head so many times he’s now frightened at the idea of going home again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Only the complete impossibility of it keeps him from asking Ian to let him stay at his place. He lingers by the shop door though, while Ian locks up, until the other boy asks:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you going to be okay tonight? I could sneak you into my bed if you want.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“In the room you share with your two brothers?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian doesn’t answer, doesn’t have to, and Mickey shakes his head. He turns to leave; there’s no point putting it off any longer, and he doesn’t want to walk home with Ian tonight. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gallagher lets him go without a word. </span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s right to be scared; Terry is apoplectic when he gets home. He wants to know where Mickey’s been. Wants to know why </span>
  <em>
    <span>he</span>
  </em>
  <span> had to answer the phone when Mickey’s probation officer had called, and why </span>
  <em>
    <span>he</span>
  </em>
  <span> had to deal with her cunty questions. He yells while Mickey listens from his place pressed against the wall next to the couch, and when he thinks his son isn’t listening close enough, he cracks him across the face with an open handed slap that only makes Mickey less attentive than he had been before. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After that, Terry calms down a little and goes to the kitchen for a drink while Mickey worries at his freshly split lip with his tongue. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>From the couch, Joey turns up the TV while Mickey uses Terry’s distraction to try and disappear into his room. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Terry yells from the kitchen when he sees him trying to slip away. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s far from over yet. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Another forty-five minutes pass before Terry’s completely exhausted himself. He makes no mention of the previous night, or Ian, but he finds plenty else with his son’s behavior to complain about: phone calls from probation, the hours Mickey’s been spending at work instead of helping the family, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Mandy </span>
  </em>
  <span>- always his responsibility no matter how old she gets -, the lack of food and general state of the house. Terry gets it all out, a real laundry list of complaints, while Mickey stands silently and listens. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But no mention of Ian. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No hints that anything happened last night to upset him.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When it’s finally over, and Mickey’s dismissed, he goes to his room. Once he’s safe inside, and the door is closed, he pushes everything off his nightstand, mindless of where it falls, and dumps some of the coke he’s supposed to be selling onto the cleared top. He’ll just have to take a loss on this bag because over the next hour he snorts all of it, until the shake in his legs and hands is truly beyond his control; until the rest of his life becomes a simple progression of events. Events that will happen to someone that is not him, and, when he looks at it that way, the path forward seems so clear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Unfortunately, five minutes later he forgets what he planned on doing, if he had ever actually come up with any ideas after all, and has to start all over again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He paces and smokes cigarettes and holds the Glock in his hand even though he hasn’t gotten more ammunition. It’s the weight of it he likes anyways. The promise: that when he has it, no one would dare fuck with him, not even Terry. Regardless of whether or not that’s actually true. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Later in the evening, Mandy comes home. She doesn’t look in to check on him - a good thing, he’s in no mood to talk to anyone - but he hears her go into her room and turn some music on. Shortly after that, he crashes. Emotionally, physically exhausted, face still hurting, he falls into a thin sleep full of stressful dreams where he stands naked in front of his family, nothing to cover himself, and they all laugh. Even Mandy.</span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>The next month takes more out of Mickey physically than any of the previous ones he’s lived through. Terry rides him harder than ever. Any bitch work that comes up, Mickey is automatically volunteered. Digging graves? He does that. Intimidation? Send Mickey. Need someone to sit on a drop for hours, no breaks, no sleep? Terry’s got a guy. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What’s he going to say? No? Not if he wants a bed to come back to. Not if he wants to see the next sunrise without a black eye.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s out almost every night. If Terry catches him sleeping, he shakes him and sends him back out for something else - There’s no shortage of work for Milkovich’s in Chicago. When he’s not working for his father, he does his best to keep to the schedule Ian sets up for them at the Kash-and-Grab. He’d rather be there - taking ‘smoke-breaks’ with Ian - than anywhere else, but he also has to sleep at least sometimes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He stops shaving, wears the same jacket for weeks in a row without noticing. The people he’s hanging out with now have an aura about them that seems to discourage personal hygiene. Had Mickey thought he knew the family business before? Had he really thought he deserved a place at the table after doing a few late-night runs? Jobs that had always been cherry-picked by his father. Jobs suitable for the youngest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not any more.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now Mickey is doing the real work. The work that has defined his family since before he was born. The kind of work that requires hoodies and ski-masks and sometimes gloves. The kind of work that’s introduced him to what a rotting body smells like, among other things.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a part of him, mainly the part that fondly remembers when his evenings were spent wandering the city with Ian, that part hates his new jobs. Hates the late nights, out until two or three in the morning and then up early the next day to work at the store. But there’s another part of him that kind of loves it. That part of him is relishing the new cash flow from work - both legitimate and otherwise - and the newfound power he feels. Even though it’s mostly grunt work, it’s different from the low-stakes shit he was doing before, and he can feel it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can finally afford a cell phone. Not one with a plan, one from a box he has to buy minutes for separately, but it keeps him from missing calls with his probation officer, and that seems to keep her from getting too annoyed most of the time. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The days he spends with Ian are now the strangest part of his life. It’s like they enter a completely separate micro-world when they’re together. A tiny pocket of space all their own.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In early August, he takes his orders from Terry one night and goes to pick up a car from a storage unit. He has the car keys, the key for the padlock, the front-gate combination, and the unit number, and strolls through the storage facility parking lot just like Iggy told him to: like he owns the place. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he finally finds the unit and gets the rolling door pulled up, he sees the car is in pretty bad shape. The windshield has been busted in two places on the passenger side. Slender, interconnected cracks spread out from the places it’s shattered like spiderwebs. The front bumper has seen better days too. Bent in towards the center of the car; it’s warped so badly the passenger’s side headlight has shattered. He doesn’t look underneath; doesn’t want to know if there’s blood or hair or any of the other horrible things he can imagine. Probably better not to know since he’s about to get behind the wheel and drive it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The shop he’s been told to deliver it to is only two miles away, but through the city blocks, where every turn around every corner could reveal a cop car waiting to pull him over, it feels at least ten times that long. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’d never get through it if he was just afraid. The fear is there, of course, waiting, just on the edge of his consciousness, to make his heart flutter and his hands clench compulsively at the slightest sign of a blue or red light</span>
  <span>. </span>
  <span>He has a feeling that if he gets caught driving this car, there will be no Juvie waiting for him this time. He’s not </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> afraid though. He’s also feeling a tight knot of exhilaration in his chest. It’s a high, addictive feeling, and that’s the part of this work he loves the most. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He makes it to the autobody shop without incident, and pulls into the garage under a rolling door that’s been left open for him. He feels the rush of getting away with it while he watches Manny through the rearview mirror closing the rolling door behind him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wipes off the parts of the car he’s touched, hands over the keys, and walks out the door three hundred dollars richer. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On his way back home, he runs into Ian jogging near the overpass even though it’s almost midnight. There’s an angry look of determination on his face that Mickey’s been seeing more and more lately, but when he notices the older boy walking towards him, the look clears to a smile. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They find the perfect spot, one where a bush grows right up against a concrete pillar, and when they sit between the two, they’re all but invisible to the rest of the world. Ian pulls a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his cargo shorts and lights one. They smoke it together in silence, blowing rings up through the leaves where they dissipate under the white glow of the street lamps.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can I touch it?” Ian asks after minutes of silence. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No. Get away.” Mickey swats Ian’s hand back when it goes for his beard. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why not? It looks so ridiculous. Just let me touch it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t fucking lie, you know it looks cool.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If I say it looks cool, will you let me touch it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey does finally give in and let him. He strokes it a few times and the sensation is so soothing Mickey thinks he could fall asleep right on the blacktop as long as Ian agreed not to stop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He does stop eventually, but offers up an even better service, touching Mickey’s thighs as though just saying ‘blow job’ isn’t enough; as though he’ll have to seduce him into it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Still no kissing though?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What the fuck is your deal with that?” Mickey asks, not thinking about it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know, Mick. I didn’t think I was very fucking romantic until I met you.” For a second they both look at each other with straight faces. Then, at almost the same time, they break out into smiles. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why do you always gotta be so…” Mickey waves his hand around vaguely instead of finishing the sentence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?” Ian asks, no longer smiling. “Gay? Why do I have to be so gay? Hate yourself all you want, but you’re not going to drag me into it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What was that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nothing. Just do it already or don’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Is he ever going to say anything to Gallagher that will finally convince him to just give up, to stop acting like one day they’ll be boyfriends? Something that will finally convince him Mickey isn’t worth his time. Someday maybe, but not today. Instead of going back to his run or fucking off with the rest of his smokes, Ian starts unbuttoning Mickey’s pants like, ‘just do it already’ were the magic words he’s been waiting for all along. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There isn’t really enough cover here to make this a good idea, especially when Mickey stands up so Ian can get on his knees in front of him, and he would be easily visible if there was anyone else around right now to see him. That’s the problem with keeping their relationship under wraps, though. By the time they’ve gotten this far into situations like this Mickey no longer really gives a damn. He doesn’t want to get caught, sure, but he also</span>
  <em>
    <span> really</span>
  </em>
  <span> doesn’t want Ian to stop whatever it is he’s doing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s no different tonight, when Ian’s hands are pressing his hips against the concrete support beam and, from where he’s standing, Mickey can see over the bush to the semi-lit streets beyond. He could think about being out in the open even at midnight, or the fact that they won’t be able to keep this up forever, or any number of things, but when Ian’s tongue starts doing little circles around his most sensitive places, Mickey just </span>
  <em>
    <span>can’t.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He can’t think about anything that would run contradictory to this. Ian’s mouth isn’t an inconvenience, it’s a revelation. If only Mickey could hold on to that feeling of </span>
  <em>
    <span>rightness</span>
  </em>
  <span> when they aren’t fucking; if only he could hold on to his misgivings when they are. Instead, he’s two different people, switching back and forth day after day until it feels like the contradiction might break him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It never breaks him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not when he’s driving hot cars to semi-legal garages, and not when the kid from down the block is blowing him under bridges. Especially not tonight, when Ian seems so content just to let Mickey touch his hair, when he’s obviously more interested in looking up and making eye contact than deep-throating. Far be it for Mickey to complain. It’s not like he’s neglecting anything; Ian’s no less capable of licking and sucking in ways that make Mickey’s chest hitch when they’re looking right at each other than when they’re not. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If only this was all about Ian’s technique. If only he gave more of a shit about Ian’s warm tongue pressed flat and sliding against the underside of his cock, because that’s the part that </span>
  <em>
    <span>feels so fucking good</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Instead he’s doing everything in his power to hold all those feelings off so he can spend just one more minute watching Ian do it to him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian’s just so fucking hot. Not just here, in the dim glow of streetlights at midnight, under the roaring train that sounds like home. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Their home.</span>
  </em>
  <span> At work too, on the couch with Mandy, on the street. Pretty much anywhere he’s ever run in to him, Mickey’s been struck by how attractive he is. So why doesn’t everyone else see what he does? What is it about Ian that keeps him coming back every time, even when he knows he shouldn’t?  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe it’s just Ian; whatever the fuck that means. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally it’s too much, and Mickey does close his eyes because he’s not going to be able to cum when he’s looking into Ian’s eyes tonight any more than he’d be able to just from talking to him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>More contradictions. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s just easier with his eyes closed to feel everything: Ian’s hands still pressing into his hips, the feeling of his own orgasm building like a wave on the shore about to break. It’s easier to talk to Ian with his eyes closed too, to tell him something intimate like the fact that what he’s doing now is </span>
  <em>
    <span>just right</span>
  </em>
  <span> and that, if he keeps it up, Mickey’s going to cum. Which he does, just seconds after he gets the words out. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Probably he should have reciprocated. Probably he should have gotten right down onto his knees before Ian had a chance to stand up himself, and then maybe he could have spared himself the mess on his shirt he has to rinse and ring out into the sink when he gets home. Instead he’s selfish, or slow on the uptake, and before he can think to Ian has stood up, pressed their bodies together, and decides to get off like that instead. With his neck buried in Mickey’s collar just like he likes, and his knuckles rubbing against the softest part of Mickey’s stomach until he has his own orgasm all over the worn fabric of their clothes.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s probably not the grossest stain on this shirt, but it’s the only one that leaves Mickey absolutely convinced he’s going to wash it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After that, what more is there to say? Should he stay for another cigarette and hear about the guy Ian had seen earlier, walking his cat on a leash, and how it had made him smile? Or, somehow even more mundane, keep listening and find out about Fiona’s struggles with her boyfriend, Liam’s growing vocabulary of baby words. Maybe he should give Ian the most interesting tidbits about his own extracurricular work, the parts that make him seem cool without going too deep into the illegality of it because that will only make him frown.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He does. All of it, and once again finds himself crawling into bed so late, it’s early. Because being together like that is easy, when it’s just them. No outside forces or expectations, but no matter how many times he turns it over in his mind, Mickey just can’t think of a way to get both his worlds to coexist. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He and Ian will just have to keep hiding; it’s the only solution he can come up with. </span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>It works so well for so long, until it doesn’t. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He starts the day like normal. It’s a work-with-Ian day, and the alarm on his flip-phone wakes him up at seven-thirty. Ian’s already inside when he gets there - he always is - but they go through the ritual of opening the store together. When Linda radios Ian to bring up breakfast, Mickey watches the register. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A normal day.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>An hour before the lunch rush, they make their purposeful eye contact. Mickey puts their ‘back in 5 min’ sign up, locks the front door, and they go into the cooler together like they have dozens of times before. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What he wants in this moment, more than anything else in the world, is to watch Ian flip a bottle up into the air and catch it with a flourish like Mickey’s supposed to be impressed. He wants to roll his eyes and pretend to be so unimpressed he’s just going to leave, only to feel Ian grab his shirt and pull him back. He wants to do the little dance they do, where he tries to get undressed as quickly as possible and Ian tries to get as close to him as he can before that happens. Otherwise they’ll just end up banging and Gallagher won’t even get to pretend they’re going to kiss or cuddle or whatever the fuck it is he wants to do while Mickey’s just trying to get their clothes off. This time he clearly loses; Ian gets an arm around his waist before he can turn around and now their chests are pressed together while the back of Mickey’s legs run into the rolling cart he was just about to bend over.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Let’s do it like this.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You a fucking contortionist now?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, like this…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Without warning, Ian bends down and grabs Mickey behind his knees, making like he’s going to lift Mickey up. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What the- Get the fuck off me!” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He struggles with enough force that Ian has to let him down, but only can stand a few seconds of his pouting before giving in anyways. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine, alright. Just-” But he doesn’t get to tell Ian what to do, only stand still long enough for him to do it. He’s already got his arm under Mickey’s butt again, and lifts him onto the rolling cart, because apparently they’ve moved past getting fucked from behind like decent human beings, and now Ian wants to look at Mickey while they do it as though there’s something worth seeing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wants to be something worth seeing.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So, they’re like that, in what’s fast becoming Mickey’s favorite position - though he kind of loses his taste for it after this - when they get interrupted again. Not by Kash this time, gone to whatever corner of the world he felt he’d be happiest in - probably whichever one is furthest from his pregnant wife - though compared to who catches them this time, Mickey would have been grateful if it was. Instead, it’s Frank’s voice that comes from the other side of one of the cooler doors.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hello boys.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He shouldn’t be surprised - frankly, he doesn’t deserve to be after all the discoveries and near-misses - but still manages a moment of it. Frank is looking at them like a cat that’s finally gotten it’s claws in the canary, and all Mickey can do is gawk at him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As if any of this should come as a surprise. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But mostly he’s surprised because, after Terry’s last outburst, this wasn’t supposed to happen again. They’ve been so much more careful lately. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>locked the door, goddammit. Well, not the back door. That lock is broken, and he and Ian are the only ones that ever use it, and he hasn’t gotten around to fixing it because he’s got a thousand other things on his mind, and...</span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Mickey knew that if they did get discovered again, the person who saw something they shouldn’t, couldn’t, under any circumstances, be allowed to talk. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That had seemed so much more plausible when it had been hypothetical.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the time it takes to pull their clothes back on, Frank’s taken almost a hundred dollars of stuff off the shelf, and cash from the register too. He’s a loud-mouthed drunk, easily bought, and can’t be trusted with any secret. Let alone </span>
  <em>
    <span>Mickey’s </span>
  </em>
  <span>secret. He just can’t. All the money and beatdowns in the world can’t guarantee Frank Gallagher’s silence. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He watches that dumb motherfucker pull his arm up in a fake salute, and thinks: </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m going to have to kill him. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Not just kill in an abstract, I-might-have-to-do-that-someday kind of way, but literally kill him. Shoot Frank in the head so he’s nothing but another body Mickey has to dig a grave for. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He has gotten pretty good at that now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The second Frank’s gone, Mickey starts pacing. Ian’s looking at him like ‘Oh, well. What can you do?’ and it’s infuriating. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Look,” He says, trying to preemptively cut off any arguments. “Nobody will miss Frank, anyways.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian’s obviously not on board, but now that he knows he’s going to </span>
  <em>
    <span>have</span>
  </em>
  <span> to go through with it, Mickey’s mind starts forming a concrete plan. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shoot him in the head. Dump him in the river.” Easy. Clean. Simple. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He has a lousy memory. He’s probably already forgotten.” Ian says, but Mickey doesn’t have time to argue with him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can’t chance that.” If they dump Frank in the river, his body could turn up. Better to just have him disappear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll talk to him-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Cut his hands off, pull his teeth…” He’ll be just one of the unidentified corpses this city turns up every year. “Can’t be identified.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll take care of it.” Ian tries again, but he won’t. The more Mickey thinks about it, the more sure he is that Ian won’t be able to do anything like that to his father. Hell, Mickey isn’t sure even he’ll be able to do it, and he doesn’t give a shit about Frank. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My uncle works at the foundry. He’ll dump his teeth in the chrome plating vat.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You need this job for your probation.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As though going back to Juvie is the worst of Mickey’s worries. At least if he’s in Juvie, he’ll be alive. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, what I need is to take care of Frank and his big mouth.” Ian can’t help, he gets that, but it has to be done. “Stay here. This won’t take long.”</span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>He goes home, thinking about getting a gun, something with the serial number filed off, but when he gets there and sees his brother and cousin sitting at the kitchen table, he feels an immense wave of relief: he doesn’t want to do this alone. What he really wants is Ian’s help - he is, after all, the reason Mickey keeps finding himself in situations like this - but family will also do. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In true Milkovich fashion, they’re up for helping out with a kidnap-and-strangle, and Mickey feels a lot better having Iggy at his back when they walk into Frank’s favorite bar. The bartender gives him lip, calls him sweetie, but Mickey barely notices. It had seemed like such a sure thing they’d find Frank here, he spent the whole drive over psyching himself up for what he’s going to have to do. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Yesterday, he would have said murder is simple. He’s seen the outcomes, knows plenty of people - including Iggy - who have gotten away with it no problem. Still, he’s never been in the position of doing it himself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If it’s so damn easy, why does he feel nothing but relief when he realizes Frank isn’t here? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The bartender gives them a lead on another bar, but when they get there the waitress says they haven’t served Frank since the early nineties. She even has a faded ‘BANNED’ poster to prove it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After that, they go to the Gallagher house, hitting up every other bar on the way there, but Frank is nowhere to be found. Every time Mickey has to force himself to move, to get up and out of the car. It’s no different at the Gallagher’s when he makes himself knock on the door. If Frank answers, he’ll just shoot him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He </span>
  <em>
    <span>has</span>
  </em>
  <span> to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He fingers the gun in his pocket while he waits, and bounces from foot to foot in an unconscious attempt to let out nervous energy. It’s Fiona, the eldest, who answers. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mickey?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is Frank here?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What? No, I haven’t seen him.” She starts to say something else, but he cuts her off.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So he’s not here?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No. He’s not. Why are you looking for him?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He walks back down the steps and gets into the car while she yells out after him: “What the fuck?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If Frank disappears, people will know Mickey was looking for him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If he doesn’t kill Frank, Terry will turn his face into a bloody mess and Mickey doesn’t think he’ll stop there. He thinks Terry will kill him this time. Not in the abstract way either. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Almost a year ago, he had stood across from the Kash-and-Grab and waited for Ian to appear. Tonight, he’s in the same position, watching the Alibi and waiting for Frank to emerge, but he’s too stressed out to make the comparison. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The bartender locks up. Still no sign of Frank. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey’s on the edge of something that feels very much like a breakdown. So much time has been lost already. A whole day, and if Frank really has been drinking at other bars, he could have spilled what he saw to any number of people. If the gossip starts up again. If it gets back to Terry…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He has to, </span>
  <em>
    <span>has </span>
  </em>
  <span>to, do this. For himself, for Ian, for his father who deserves a better son than Mickey. But Frank is either very good at hiding, or Mickey’s not being honest with himself about how hard he’s looking. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When it’s clear Frank’s gone underground for the night, Mickey drops Iggy and Colin back off at the house and then drives around restlessly himself until dawn. He checks every spot he can think of. Even gets out of the car and walks around the shanty town looking for him. He ignores a call from his probation officer, and smokes a joint he found in the glovebox. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When the high first hits him, all the anxiety about murder slips away. Shoot Frank? Yes, he can. And why not? He can’t even remember why he shouldn’t want to. Frank dead solves all their problems. Ian will understand, he’ll </span>
  <em>
    <span>have</span>
  </em>
  <span> to understand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey will murder Frank. Ian will forgive Mickey. Terry will hear nothing. All their problems solved. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A few hours later, he pulls the car up to the curb in front of his house and passes out unceremoniously behind the wheel. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wakes up after the sun comes up the next morning, unbearably hot inside the cab of the car. He also has a full bladder and a chest tight with panic. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The whole night. Frank had the whole night to let something slip. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His probation officer has been calling, if she finds him she’ll send him back. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He pees in the front yard, because he doesn’t want to go inside. Then, he drives to the Kash-and-Grab because Ian must know where Frank is. He’s in the back of the store, by the loading bay, when Mickey gets there, smoking and still acting like nothing’s happening. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey has no idea how to convince him that if Terry gets wind of this there will be no more chances. That </span>
  <em>
    <span>he</span>
  </em>
  <span> will be the mangled corpse whose teeth have been pried out and dumped into a vat to melt. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian shrugs it off like he doesn’t give a shit, and maybe he doesn’t. He’s got a choice to make, and chooses Frank.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Bullshit!” Mickey shouts when Ian lies and says he hasn’t seen him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looks him right in the eyes, and watches, chest tight, as Ian wordlessly dismisses him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All this time, he’s been the fool. He’s the one who let himself get caught up in Ian-fucking-Gallagher. The same Gallagher that had gotten him shot, that spent the whole summer talking about how he can’t wait to leave Chicago, to leave </span>
  <em>
    <span>Mickey. </span>
  </em>
  <span>How could he be so stupid to think he had ever meant anything to Ian at all? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is exactly what he’s been expecting all along.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He takes money from the register - nothing more than what he’s owed, he’s not like Frank - and finds a new, bitter, kind of courage inside himself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s done, done. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Done.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Done fucking Ian, done working with Ian, and he’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure as shit</span>
  </em>
  <span> done listening to all of Ian’s problems. Smoking with him under the bleachers or in the dugout; talking in their hidden spots around the neighborhood until the sun comes up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s another promise to stay away from Ian, but this time he’s going to keep it. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He’s done</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ian doesn’t want to help Mickey survive, he wants to be normal. He wants to live without sneaking around, like his siblings, and Mickey can relate. How many times has he seen his own brothers - on the couch, the porch, the back step - with their tongues shoved down the throats of their newest flings, hands up their shirts? Thousands it feels like, and every time it makes him long for the freedom to do that himself. With a boy, with Ian, but he can’t. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gallagher might have a death wish, but Mickey doesn’t. He’ll protect both of them from Frank if that’s what it takes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You think we’re boyfriend and girlfriend? You’re nothing but a warm mouth to me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s so angry when he says it, he almost means it. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>wants</span>
  </em>
  <span> to mean it. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>does </span>
  </em>
  <span>mean it. Except, then Ian’s face transforms into the one Mickey hates the most. Full of hurt and sadness; it’s an accusation. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You </span>
  </em>
  <span>made me feel this. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You </span>
  </em>
  <span>hurt me. Like a bucket of frigid water, it extinguishes some of the burning anger inside of Mickey.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sorry I gotta kill your dad, but I’m doing a lot of people a favor. Including you.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He leaves before Ian can say anything else. He doesn’t want to hear anything that could come out of his mouth right now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Back at home, he stares at his cellphone and sees he’s missed another two calls from his probation officer. His leg jitters endlessly while he sits at the kitchen table, but he can’t make it stop. He should just call her back, she probably only wants to check in, but doesn’t. There’s beer and guns and drugs everywhere, and if she comes for a visit now he’s fucked. If she gives him a drug test anytime soon, he’s fucked. A giant crater could open up in the middle of the city and swallow him whole, and he’d still be less fucked than he is right now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Colin says Frank’s at the Alibi, he grabs a gun and gets back in the car, less sure than ever that killing Frank will solve even one of his problems. </span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>Frank finally leaves the bar after the sun goes down, and Mickey’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>got this.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sends his brothers up ahead because he’s </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Got this</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>already come up with a plan to take Frank out without anyone being the wiser. He’s going to put one bullet in the back of Frank’s head, and then this whole, hellish fiasco will be over. One bullet and Frank will never talk again, never take another drink, never get into another fight with his sons, never see another sunrise from the underside of an alleyway dumpster. He’ll be nothing but a lifeless corpse. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Everything Frank could ever possibly do in the future: gone. Gone because Mickey took it all away. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Ian will never speak to me again.</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>How will he be able to look at himself in the mirror if he does this? How will he be able to sleep?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Behind him, a cop car pulls over to shakedown some homeless guy, and Mickey should be nervous about the police showing up but, after two panicked days and a sleepless night, he’s well beyond that now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Frank stumbles, unaware, along the sidewalk, and Mickey’s never wanted anything as bad as he wants the courage, now, to go through with this. He thinks about Ian, in the dugout, watching him do pull-ups. About Terry, in the car, waiting for Mickey to be the son he always wanted him to be. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Terry’s son could kill Frank and not think twice, but no son of Terry’s would ever find themselves in this situation, and Mickey doesn’t know how to reconcile those two things. If he did, if he could...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He gives himself one last chance to just </span>
  <em>
    <span>do it</span>
  </em>
  <span>. To be the man his father is always telling him to be. To make his physical actions match the Mickey in his head: the one who’s strong and sure of himself and can actually take care of business when he needs to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The frustration he feels when he realizes he </span>
  <em>
    <span>can’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>go through with it is exactly what he had felt at the rub ‘n tug. Every time it really comes down to him, when life gives him a chance to just </span>
  <em>
    <span>man-up already, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he always fails. Terry might be half the genes inside of him, but Mickey’s not his father, and he doesn’t blame him at all for being disappointed. Mickey’s just that: a disappointment. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He throws the gun in the trash along with his own stupid pride. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And now he’s broken just about every rule of probation possible in the last forty-eight hours. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He could have had everything he wanted if there was just a little more time, an apartment in a far away city with Ian, but in the end he’s only proved what he already knew: he can’t take care of anyone, including himself, and the only ticket he’s ever getting out of the Yards is going to come in the form of a jumpsuit and sentencing hearing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The cops are still behind him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Terrible food and uncomfortable bed aside, Juvie is safe. No Terry. No Frank. No Ian. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>To top it all off, he gets to hit a beat cop right in the face, hard enough to make his knuckles burn. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not the worst way to end the night. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Of course, it doesn’t end there. It ends in the drunk tank in booking where Mickey has to pull a guy off the bench so he can get a spot along the wall; where the sound of the other men, moaning, arguing - with each other and themselves - is familiar enough to fill him with a sick dread. Terry might not be able to get at Mickey when he’s inside, but there’s something else waiting for him in Juvie. Long days, endless nights, the constant clamor of other forgotten boys who, like him, only ever wanted to make their fathers proud. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He drifts in and out of a light doze, using his balled up hoodie as a pillow against the wall.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It takes all night and the better part of the next day to get processed, and by the time Mickey’s back in the system - his violation earning him the maximum sentence of a year this time - he’s so dead on his feet it barely registers. He closes his eyes and almost falls asleep standing up while the corrections officer pats him down before he can get dressed in the humiliating jumpsuit he’ll be wearing for the foreseeable future. </span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
<p>
  <span>Same block, different cell. There’s some new faces, but also plenty of ones he recognizes. They welcome him back with no surprise he couldn’t hack it on the outside for more than a few months. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sees Mandy when she visits, tells her where to find his money, and calls her a fuck-twat when she puts less than half in his commissary and takes the rest for herself. ‘Finder’s Fee’ she calls it, and he doesn’t have a leg to stand on because less-than-half is still better than nothing, which is what he would have without her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t entertain any thoughts about Ian at all. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The time passes a little faster than it had during his first stint here. There’s nothing waiting for him on the outside now, nothing to look forward to, and he gets a pretty good business set up. Mandy mails him nude mags and girl-on-girl porn which he distributes to the other guys on the block for his own fee. He’s set up, comfortable enough, and safe from Terry. If there’s something deep inside him, some longing left unsatisfied, it’s nothing any of the other boys here can’t take care of for him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The days go by, but they no longer have names, and Mickey carries the stress of the night he was booked without recognizing it through each of them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the same late-fall night that Ian visits a gay club for the first time with his mother, Mickey’s pinning his cellmate to the tiny rectangle of concrete wall between their bunk and the toilet. It’s a struggle, but nothing like the kind of fight Ian would put up, and he gains the upper hand without too much work. They both want to fuck, any amount of forced celibacy, especially in prison, doesn’t last long, but fucking’s different on the inside. There’s nothing to talk about in here but each other, and if Mickey takes it in the ass from one guy, word will spread and everyone else will start seeing him as a bitch too. He could kiss goodbye to his girly-mag racket, to the extra cigarettes and smuggled weed. Bitches don’t get to have, or sell, things. Everything they have belongs to someone bigger and stronger by default. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So Mickey’s not gentle when he pushes his cellmate into the wall, or pins his arms against his back, but life isn’t gentle; any sign of weakness can get you killed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is it going to hurt?” The kid against the wall, still panting from their brief scuffle, asks. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ll be fine. Just, don’t forget to breathe.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mickey pulls at both of their pants in the dark, and spits into the palm of his hand. He’s not thinking about anything, or anyone, but what’s happening right here, right now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>More time passes until it’s too cold to go outside, and all their rec hours are held indoors.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A week before Ian has his awkward family dinner with Ned, Mickey’s cellmate gets released. His new one is taller and has more muscles than Mickey could ever hope to. He pays the guy - who everyone refers to as ‘Big’ Joe, or just Big - in cigarettes to keep him happy and out of Mickey’s things, but they don’t interact much more than that. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His old cellmate gone, he fucks in the shower and on work duty instead. In tight janitorial closets with trusties who take one look at Mickey’s tats and arms and bearded face, and practically drag him into un-patrolled corners where they bang without condoms or lube. It’s not bad, but it’s nothing compared to how it used to be…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not that he ever thinks about that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No phone calls. Rarely any visitors. His entire life becomes what’s behind these bars. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>New Year’s Eve rolls around eventually, and Mickey spends the last day of the year exactly like the first. Curled up tight on a thin mattress, behind a reinforced door that’s been locked from the outside, listening to his cellmate snore, and thinking about Ian-fucking-Gallagher.</span>
</p>
<p>*-*-*</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you all for your kudos and comments, and I'll try to repay the love by staying on a schedule writing this!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope you enjoyed! I'm having lots of fun writing this so I'll definitely continue!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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